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Maybe the Internet and email should be abolished, because it brings both good and bad news in real time, which means that nothing can be swept under the carpet any longer. Nor kept under wraps.

There is a large Pakistani community settled in America. Much of it is duly and legally landed. There are also cowboys, but how many they are and how they managed to get past customs and immigration remains a well-guarded secret and a tribute to their dexterous touch.

But whether they be legal or illegal, urban or rural, rich or poor, they worry about Pakistan and what goes on there. It is a pity that there is always something going on there, and has been going on there as long as one can remember.

The recent disclosure in the Senate that three prime ministers had used state funds to have their families, friends and hangers-on perform the umra really shocked Pakistanis living here. Since the publication of the list, Chaudhri Shujaat Hussain has cleared his name and Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri has done the decent thing and apologised. The foreign minister’s example should be followed by others, because although it wasn’t he personally who drew up the list or handed it in, he accepted responsibility and it has not diminished him.

The other two prime ministers, including the present incumbent of that office with the crown of thorns, have said not a word, nor offered to pay what by any yardstick is their personal responsibility. I do not know much about the financial situation of Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, though being a good old feudal, he should be in no want, but Shaukat Aziz is rich and, I am told, no Scrooge either, so why has he not apologised and restored to the national exchequer what should never have been taken out of it?

A Pakistani-American who has lived here for over thirty years has been calling me to talk about this, though I have suggested to him that he should call the prime minister instead, something he seems reluctant to do (not that he will get through to the occupant of the chair that once was occupied by Khan Liaquat Ali Khan, Husseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto). This greatly troubled gentleman wants to know why Pakistanis who get into elevated positions show such lack of style, good taste and — he adds with much regret — honesty. He recalled an incident during Bill Clinton’s presidency when a senior White House staffer who had used an official helicopter to play a few rounds of golf in another town had to resign after the story of his day off at unauthorised public expense appeared in the press. What can I tell him, except that Pakistan is not America.

Another Pakistani, an academic, wants to know why after having spent his entire life working in one of the world’s most famous banks and after reaching a position of much eminence there, the present prime minister did exactly what one would have expected the run-of-the-mill public servant to do. He wondered if his doing this sort of thing, despite a lifetime of the most sophisticated experience in Europe and the United States, only proves that once we return to Pakistan, genetics takes over. I have no answer to give him, so I hope Shaukat Aziz will drop him a line (address supplied on request).

I am reminded of Agha Mumtaz, a great batsman from Sialkot who had played representative cricket before independence. Once watching a match on a Sunday, he noticed a player who was using his bat as if it were some kind of an outsize hammer or a cross he had been condemned to carry. “Ye kya batsmen aa gaye hain; na koi stroke hai, na koi style hai”, was all Agha Mumtaz said.

I am of the view that even if you do the “not done” thing, you should do it with some flair. Years ago, for instance, a friend of mine who was doing time in a European jail for having passed game checks to more than one establishment, phoned me — he was resourceful — to go and see an Austrian businessman and assure him that all matters of contention between the two of them would be settled once he was free. The businessman, owner of a most reputable Viennese company, expressed amazement that such a request should have been made to him, considering that he had been cheated out of a lot of money. So I asked him how come with all his experience and knowledge of business, he had been “took”. His reply was simple, “Mein lieber Freund, that is a compliment to the genius of the gentleman whose message you bring me.”

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Sir Geoff aka Syed Iqbal Geoffrey of Salarpore and Brighton, painter extraordinaire and litigant par excellence, is hopping about on one leg, not because he is mad, but because he is angry. This needs to be examined more closely. As I write, Sir Geoff is in Bombay, not breaking bread with that failed cartoonist Bal Thakrey, but exhibiting his work at the National Gallery of Modern Art.

Sir Geoff is not to be trifled with, since in his famous phrase, he has no time for keera makoras. You can cross him only at your peril. I speak out of experience. After I wrote a piece about him about fifteen years ago wondering if all the entries in his Who’s Who were the result of an overheated imagination or if they were real, Sir Geoff, sitting in distant Lahore, began firing off alarming legal-notice type letters in all directions. Several came to Vienna where I was then living, others went to every single oil minister of the thirteen countries that made up the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries for whose specialised news agency I was writing oil-drenched news stories and LNG-inflated features. Our secretary general, the former Indonesian oil minister, the courtly Dr Subroto, sent for me and expressed puzzlement at Sir Geoff’s promise to take OPEC to the cleaners, including everybody who worked for it, not forgetting this humble scribe whose only sin was wondering if Sir Geoff was for real. After reassuring Dr Subroto that Sir Geoff’s bark may be considered more threatening than his bite and that it was a local Lahore matter, I set up researching Sir Geoff’s claims, just in case he did file million dollar law suits against me in Vienna, London, Geneva, Washington, Lahore, Karachi and perhaps even Sialkot (where I would have won being son of the soil).

To my disappointment, all of Sir Geoff’s entries checked, except three (he has been at my tail ever since to tell him which three). Some time ago, I remembered one. It was something called Sangoman University that did not seem to exist. Sir Geoff has since told me that it did exist and he was an alumni of that institution, the only difference being that it is now known as the University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. I haven’t checked that out for three reasons. One, because Sir Geoff and I are now friends; two, because he has gifted me an acre of land somewhere in Lahore (no, I don’t have the papers, otherwise I would hawk it); and, three because he has conferred an honorary doctorate on me from the IG University. And what is the IG University? Elementary, it is the Iqbal Geoffrey University that does not exist, at least not today.

Some time ago, I wrote to Sir Geoff asking how clipping out pictures from magazines and sticking them on a piece of cardboard, along with stamps or stickers proclaiming him to be the greatest painter since Leonardo da Vinci was art. I also reminded him that once in exasperation after a whole evening of listening to the first person singular of Sadequain, my metre finally turned (I love this Lahori phrase, though it may not be English) and I announced, “Sadequain, I am sick of your big, bulbous ego.” Sir Geoff’s answer was that he was only declaring what in any case was true. He was the greatest. Eat your heart out Muhammad Ali.

In the days when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister, Sir Geoff filed a writ in the Lahore High Court demanding that the then high commissioner of Pakistan, some business buddy whose name escapes me, should be given his marching orders and he appointed in his place. Sir Geoff promised that he would turn the place in Lowndes Square upside down (which it has been in need of for many years), return his chauffeured limo and come to work every morning riding a bike. Sir Geoff’s argument was that merit and not buddy-buddy should alone be the basis of such appointments. Result: the man stayed as head honcho in London and Sir Geoff stayed in Lahore, firing off writs and defending all lost causes, including his own.

Recently, on a visit to London, Sir Geoff sued the Tate Gallery for several million pounds, charging racism and accusing the venerable institution of having damaged his work. He also had the story placed in The Observer , London. Sir Geoff says that the Queen (old Brenda) once called him the “Arts Council of Great Britain” and that Sir Herbert Read had described him as “an astonishing phenomenon”. Sir Herbert is also quoted by Sir Geoff as having declared him to be “the greatest artist who ever walked on earth”. Recently, a most mysterious lady by the name of Dr Antonia W Blackwell, residing at 22-C Davis Road, Lahore, wrote to the UK Department of Culture that the Queen should confer the Order of Merit on Sir Geoff as well as make him Knight Grand Cross of the Thistle. The Department replied that it had no say in the matter and the Order of Merit was “the sole gift of the Sovereign.”

Another representation made to the British government (Sir Geoff has a thing about the Brits) on his behalf by one MIH Rajpoote, B.Com, MA, asked why Sir Geoff had been denied membership of the House of Lords when “the likes of Sir Anwar Parvez, who has been running “sweat-shops” of illegal immigrants and who “seldom paid them wages” had been elevated to the House of Lords. Sir Geoff uses colourful language. He called one of our national leaders a “certifiable baboon”, which is not being very nice to baboons.

Sir Geoff applied for a visa to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad for his Bombay exhibition and was given the usual runaround (don’t call us, we’ll call you). He immediately fired off a letter to the high commissioner, which I have framed. Here is Sir Geoff at his inimitable best, “Why not issue the visa to me, as lesser artists from India and other countries are routinely issued such visas? Recently, some Indian artists were invited to an art show surreptitiously curated by that self-styled Art Doyenna and Celebrated Parasite Commerciale Hajjan … paid for their visit, put them up in 5-star hotels, published a catalogue worth Rs 2.5 million … and India is a richer country: and I do not get even a reply.” He asked that a copy of his protest be faxed to the Indian Culture Minister and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while graciously offering to pay the cost.”

I should add that Sir Geoff’s law degree comes from Harvard and next time anyone who reads this is in trouble with the law, he should repair to Geoffrey Square in Mozang, but bear in mind that Sir Geoff either works free or charges Rs. 786,000 per appearance. And let no bearded goat ever challenge his credentials because Sir Geoff is a certified Syed, so watch out.

All left-handers are going to hell — and that includes Saeed Anwar, not to mention Wasim Akram. As for left handers from earlier times such as Neil Harvey, being non-Muslim they were bound for the blazes anyway. And who says that? A very pious gentleman with a prayer mark on his forehead and a beard to go with it. Left-handers are damned, it appears, because the left hand is impure, if not actually the property of Old Nick. Anything it touches instantly turns into a cinder from the central furnace of hell.

Angels and ministers of heaven, protect us, wrote the Bard, who, based on the logic applied to Saeed Anwar and Wasim Akram, is also going to hell, assuming he is not already there. WS is damned for two reasons. He was not a Muslim and he was a poet. Poets, argue those who have taken over the responsibility of looking after the spiritual needs of much of the Pakistani diaspora, are hell’s firewood. I must tell Munir Niazi next time I am in Lahore. Will he be saved by the fact that one of his collections is dedicated to Imam Hussain? This, one would need to check with Maulana “Left-Hander”. I suppose the best time to appeal to his good side is when he has eaten dinner.

The faithful are in dire trouble in this country, considering that those who are supposed to tend to their souls and get them scrubbed, cleaned and ironed out for heaven, are not very optimistic about how many will end up in the good place. The situation was never very good, but after 9/11 it can be said to have become abysmal. What the congregations are told in an average sermon is dire enough to make them cringe every time they think of what awaits them in afterlife.

Muslims are being told that they have to pull in their horns, protect themselves from the sin-saturated environment they have chosen to live in and keep their children safe from alien and irreligious influences. The son of someone I know has taken down all pictures that hung on the walls of the house since, according to him, all representation of living (or dead) human beings is forbidden. The sight of the average congregation in most mosques is a sea of skullcaps and untrimmed beards. The hijab is claiming more and more female heads. Off and on, one runs into the somewhat amusing spectacle of a woman wearing a pair of skin-tight blue jeans and a hijab at the same time.

Faryal Virk, a young woman from North Carolina, who can’t get over the fact that the health minister of Punjab is a defrocked US doctor who was held responsible for causing the biggest outbreak of hepatitis C in this country, has sent me an email this week which reads, “There aren’t many people among my Pakistani acquaintances here in North Carolina who like to read or try to understand the broader implications of what’s happening in Pakistan today. Besides, we have too many overly religious people in this community, many the type that would like to see the religion column in their passports! Others are armchair politicians who believe the maulvis should come into power because they won’t deceive the population!” She writes that her “most narrate-able experience” came recently at a dinner attended by doctors and their wives. When she told a Pakistani woman that she was currently reading a book about the Quaid-e-Azam and learning a lot about him as a person, the woman said, “Acchha, tau iss tara karo, parh key mujhay bhi batana kya likha hai”(Good, then do this: after you have read it, let me know what it says). That more or less sums up the extent of the intellectual curiosity of the average Pakistani.

You hardly ever see a Pakistani in a library, a concert, a play or a museum. So where do they go when they are not at work? A friend to whom I put this question replied, “Simple, they go home and eat aloo gosht.”

As for those who have declared that all left-handers are bound for hell’s central furnace, I offer them Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Khair, dozakh mein mai milay na milay: Sheikh sahib se jaan tau chootay gi which means in plain English that while it is anybody’s guess whether one would be able to get a drink in hell or not, one would at least be rid of pulpit-pounders.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Sardar Muhammad Sadiq, whom Muslehuddin had annointed “the uncrowned king of Lahore,” used to say that three things were certain to croak, no matter what anybody did. They were Metro Hotel, where Wapda House now stands, the Civil and Military Gazette, now a shopping plaza, and the Australasia Bank, which can be found neither in Australia nor Asia.

Sardar was an original as were his predictions. He once said that Ayub Khan had brought democracy to Pakistan, only he had somewhat modified Lincoln’s definition. And how was that, he was asked. “Well,” Sardar had answered, perched on the wooden stool outside International Book Service on the Mall – the road on which most of Sardar’s day and the better part of his evening were spent – “not for the people but far the people, not of but off the people, and not by but buy the people.”

Sardar Muhammad Sadiq, a born bachelor, was also the founder of the Bachelors Club several of whose members, except the founder, were to violate their basic membership qualifier by getting hitched, but which retained until the end two steadfast members: himself and Khawaja Muhammad Asadullah “Maok” who was always Sardar’s faithful companion on the road after everyone else had gone home.

In Amritsar, Sardar Sadiq was known as Sergeant. Why, I do not know. This I was told by Salahuddin Chaudhri, another Amritsari, but I never checked it with Sardar. He was a political animal and the last of the party faithfuls or what used to be called ‘ syasi karkun.’ He was a Muslim League man, and though to have fun he had agreed to be made joint secretary of the Sarkari League’s Punjab branch, at heart he remained loyal to the old League of the Quaid of the Pakistan Movement days. And although Sardar was in the Field Marshal’s League, every single joke circulating about the Field Marshal and his government bore Sardar Sadiq’s seal and stamp. At one point, some of us suggested that he should really switch to Miss Jinnah’s League, especially since she was going to take on the big chief. Sardar agreed; however, the word when carried to the other camp brought back the delightful answer that Sardar Sadiq in the enemy camp was far more useful since all the jokes circulating about the Field Marshal and his cabinet and party of sycophants were authored by him. What they left to the imagination was that if Sardar Sadiq came over to their side, all the jokes circulating about them would be Sardar’s. He was irrepressible.

Once Sardar’s good friend SM Zafar urged him to spend a few days with him in Rawalpindi, he now being Ayub’s young and ambitious law minister. Reluctantly, Sardar left Lahore, something he almost never did, and was gone some weeks. When he returned, he told friends that when someone had asked if he was living in the law minister’s Civil Lines, Rawalpindi, residence, he had replied, “Yes, but I have only rented a room.” The story did the rounds of Rawalpindi and finally got to Zafar. By that time, Sardar had had enough of the garrison town and was longing to come to his permanent headquarters spread over the warm and wonderful restaurants that dotted the section of the Mall stretching from Regal Chowk to Charing Cross.

Sardar was irreverent. Once when someone asked what he thought of another scintillating address by the dashing foreign minister at the United Nations, Sardar replied, “You mean Zulfi Bai Larkanay Wali?” He also predicted that ZAB would neither bring Islam nor socialism. At the height of Ayub’s power, Sardar would often get a band of students together and have them dance the twist – then the great rage – to his lyrics that went: “Ayub time is over, tra la la; Corruption time is over, tra la la; Gandhara time is over, tra la la. Miss Jinnah takes over, tra la la.” One of the “twisters,” if I remember was Ahmed Raza Kasuri’s youngest brother Mustafa.

Sardar Sadiq it was who made the celebrated remark that you could enter the Mayo Hospital alive, but there was no way you could leave it in the same state. Sardar was a great organiser of meetings and protest marches. Once when a commotion brought him out of Shezan Continental where he was regaling a table of friends and admirers with his stories, he found a slogan chanting platoon of old Khaksars marching away. “What is the march about?” he asked. “For the liberation of Baitul Maqdis,” he was told. Sardar’s advice was most practical, “I suggest you take Beadon Road, it is closer.”

Sardar was a prince at heart. He wanted nothing except the company of friends and good restaurants. He never took a job, had no life insurance and no bank account. The Mall was his domain. When the Yahya Khan martial law was declared, Sardar went to martial law headquarters and demanded a curfew pass. His argument was that since martial law was a frequent occurrence, he saw no reason why permanent arrangements such as he and friends gallivanting on the streets should be interfered with. He pointed out that he had never asked the army why it took over every other day. He once told me during Yahya’s days that there was nothing any of us could do to dislodge him because it was a government of prophets. “And how is that?” I asked. “Well, there is Yahya, there is Musa, there is Rahim, there is Karim, to name but a few. You can’t fight these guys.”

Sardar had no interest in women so when we heard that he had been seeing film star Tarana, we were intrigued but we kept mum. However, when stories started going around that Tarana had been seen in and out of Army House, Rawalpindi, we asked Sardar, who said, “She was Tarana then: now she is Qaumi Tarana.” The Mall has changed since his day and it is no longer a place where you can stroll around, unless you want to be run over or get arrested. On any given evening, Sardar was joined by poets, writers, actors, journalists, students, lawyers, racehorse fanciers and politicians as he walked up and down, his outer limit being Charing Cross. All the streetwalkers who pursued the world’s oldest profession on the Mall knew Sardar Sadiq. When one of them greeted him in my presence, I asked her, “Bibi, how do you know Sardar Sadiq.” She replied, “ Sardar shaib bhi Mall par time laga rahay hain; hum bhi time laga rahay hain”. Every beggar knew Sardar Sadiq and never asked him or his companions for alms. Sardar knew what trick each one of them employed to coax people to part with their money. If the trees of Gol Bagh are standing today, they owe their life to Sardar Sadiq who campaigned against the then Commissioner Mukhtar Masood who wanted to lay a Japanese rock garden in their place. “At least leave our trees alone,” was Sardar’s slogan.

Sardar died quite young after a brief and illogical illness in 1971 at the Cairns railway hospital in Lahore. He is buried in Bibi Pak Daman and if there is a stretch of road somewhere in the hereafter which is like the Mall, then surely that is where Sardar Muhammad Sadiq can be found in the afternoons and evening and of course late at night.

My favourite columnist writes for a paper that broke the sensational story when Bill Clinton was president that a space alien was living in the White House. Not so incredible, come to think of it, considering what else was going on under that roof.

The paper for which my favourite columnist Ed Anger writes can be found at the checkout at any large food store in America. There it sits cheek to jowl with such publications as the National Enquirer. This is what the average Jo reads. He can’t be bothered with the New York Times or the Washington Post with all those difficult words and stuff about people and countries that are as remote as the mist-covered moons of Saturn. It is another matter that little of what the people’s favourite tabloids print turns out to be quite true in the end. You could even say that any resemblance to the truth in their pages is more or less coincidental.

And that is what makes them fun. You can spend an entire morning struggling through the turgid prose of the so-called serious newspapers and become no wiser. Or you can breeze through the light as air writing of, say, the World Weekly News, where my favourite columnist Ed Anger’s holds court.

Here is Anger on the noble profession of nursing. “I’m madder than a doctor with a busted golf club at how coyote-ugly nurses are these days,” he complains. It turns out that when Ed’s wife Thelma Jean rushed him to hospital on account of his “bum ticker” some time back, he felt a little worried, though at the same time looking forward to “a few sponge baths and maybe a nice back rub or two” from one of those toothsome young nurses. But that wasn’t necessarily so.

“Imagine my surprise,” wails Anger, “when it turned out all the nurses in the ward have faces that would stop a clock and butts as broad as a barn door. Folks, I haven’t seen the inside of a hospital in years. Other than needing to have the metal plate in my head adjusted from time to time, I’m as fit as a fiddle, so I didn’t know about some of the big changes that have gone on over the past few years. Why back in the good old days, the prettiest gals in the world were nurses and stewardesses. When a buddy of yours said he was dating a nurse, it’s like he said he was dating Marilyn Monroe. They used to wear those tight little miniskirts that showed off their legs and they had more cleavage than a Vegas showgirl. Going to the hospital used to be better than visiting the Playboy Club, by gum.”

Well, I agree with old Ed. Those were the days. Today’s scene is different, according to him. Let us hear it in the very un-amused columnist’s voice, “Now they got them in some kind of godawful unisex pantsuits that make them look like Russian lady shot-putters, for crying out loud. But it doesn’t really matter what they wear. Some of these hatchet-faced old bags are so hideous, you need to go on life support just to look at them. For Pete’s sake, if I have to be laid up for weeks, getting thermometers up the wazoo and catheters screwed onto my thingamajiggy, at least give me the satisfaction of having it all done by some slinky little vixen in white. One of the homely nurses I got stuck with was built like a Sherman tank, with arms about as hairy as a chimpanzee.”

Anger is not very hopeful about the future of America. He writes, “I tell you, this country would be a lot better if we fired those pug-ugly nurses and replaced them with some curvy, long-legged ones. But when you take one look at the butt-ugly nurses they have working these days, you leave the hospital feeling even sicker than when you came in!”

In case Ed is planning a visit to our region at some point, I would advise him to stay away from Asma and Hina Jilani and the Aurat Foundation.

Another of my favourites in World Weekly News is the advice column done by a lady called Dotty. A wife-to-be in Salem, Massachusetts, who wanted to know what she should do as her family did not want her wedding ceremony to take place at midnight in a forest glen in a circle of candles, was told by Dotty, “If your family doesn’t want to attend your little freak show/wedding then forget them. I hope you and your new warlock are very happy together. Just try not to fall off the broomstick as you fly off on your honeymoon.”

I think what Pakistan needs is guys like old Ed and agony aunts like Dotty. If I were Shaukat Aziz, that would be item No 1 on my list of do’s.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

For most people, Khurshid Anwar was the great music director who scored some of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies for the movies, before 1947 in Lahore and Bombay, and after 1947 in Lahore. KL Saigal sang for him, as did Surayya and Rajkumari and Shamshad and, of course, the incomparable Madam Nur Jehan.

But there was another Khurshid Anwar whom everyone has forgotten. It is time he was remembered and his contribution recognised, something one can only hope for in a country where half a century after his death, Saadat Hasan Manto is treated by the establishment as if he never existed. What a pity that there should be official advocacy at the highest level of disinterring Chaudhry Rehmat Ali’s bones from England for a grand state-sponsored burial in Lahore, while a hero like Khurshid Anwar should lie unsung in a forgotten grave in Rawalpindi. Is Rehmat Ali to be honoured for having flung more abuse at the Quaid-e-Azam than all his past and present enemies and detractors put together? One wonders.

Major Khurshid Anwar, to give him his correct title, was the man who not only rejuvenated the flagging movement against the collaborationist Khizar Hayat Tiwana government in the Punjab in 1946, but who led the Afridi and Mehsud tribesmen into Kashmir in October 1947. On a recent visit to Toronto, during a conversation with Brig. FB Ali, the man whom we have to thank for forcing Gen. Yahya Khan out after the 1971 breakup of Pakistan (since no good deed goes unpunished, he was removed from service and jailed), Khurshid Anwar’s name came up. Brig. Ali told me a great deal about that remarkable man which I must share. Here, in Brig. Ali’s words are his recollections.

“I met Khurshid Anwar in late 1946 or early 1947. He had been appointed Salar-e-Ala of the Muslim League National Guards (MLNG) for the ‘Pakistan’ provinces, and had arrived in Lahore to set up his headquarters. I was referred to him by Mumtaz Daultana, and he made me responsible for the Student Section of the MLNG. I heard that he had been a Major in the Indian Army during the war, and had left under some kind of a cloud.

“Events were moving very fast, and we did not get much opportunity to do the required organisational work. Quite unexpectedly, a massive civil disobedience movement started in the Punjab against the Unionist government of Khizar Hayat Tiwana (this was precipitated by Mian Iftikharuddin, who literally forced the Punjab Muslim League Working Committee to get themselves arrested by blocking the police contingent trying to execute a search warrant at the PML head office, where the Working Committee happened to be in session). This movement soon started to get disorganised and flag, as the successive layers of leadership of the PML offered themselves for arrest, a daily occurrence. Khurshid Anwar reacted at once: he went ‘underground’ and took charge of the agitation. The faltering movement revived, and began to exert a sustained, powerful pressure on the government, which finally had the desired result, and Tiwana resigned.

“Khurshid Anwar then went to the NWFP, where the Khan brothers, who opposed the creation of Pakistan, were in power. Along with Khan Abdul Qayoom Khan and other Muslim League leaders, he started a civil disobedience movement in that province along the lines of the one in Punjab. He reprised his Punjab role there: with the political leadership in jail, he organised and led the movement while remaining ‘underground.’ Here, too, the agitation succeeded. Because he operated in a clandestine manner, very few people know that the success of these movements in Punjab and NWFP, which smoothed the way for the creation of Pakistan, was largely the work of Khurshid Anwar.

“I think it was in June 1947 - during the NWFP plebiscite - that he talked to me about taking over Kashmir as the next item on his agenda. In the second week of August 1947, in Karachi, he told me that he had got clearance to start his Kashmir operation; I believe this was from Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan. He then proceeded to the NWFP and, with the assistance of Khan Qayoom, raised the tribal lashkar that he led into Kashmir. Later on I learnt from two independent sources that, when the tribesmen tried to cross the Muzaffarabad bridge, they came under heavy fire from state troops on the other bank and fell back in disorder. When Khurshid Anwar could not persuade them to try again, he got into his jeep and charged across the bridge under fire; as he got to the other side the state troops melted away, and the advance was resumed. When the lashkar got to Baramula, the tribesmen started pillaging the town. Khurshid Anwar could not get them to stop and move on to Srinagar. He went forward himself with a few men, and was at the airfield when the Indian troops started landing.

“Khurshid Anwar was a remarkable man. Bold, brave, intelligent, resourceful, he was a born leader. Through his drive and ability, and the sheer force of his personality, he could make people follow him in dangerous and difficult enterprises. However, he was no angel; there have been rumours about his personal ethics, and some of them may well be true. But that does not in any way diminish his significant contribution to the creation of Pakistan, which has, unfortunately, remained largely unknown.”

Another of Khurshid Anwar’s admirers is M Yusuf Buch who met him in Srinagar for the first time in 1946 and met him regularly after 1947 in Pakistan. He told me from New York that Khurshid Anwar was in the civil supplies department of the Government of India during the war but because of the department’s involvement with the army, its officers were given army ranks. “He was a man who was truly in the heroic mould, but he was a disaster when it came to public relations.” He was one of those colourful individuals who follow their own destiny and who are born to lead, not be led. His dying words were, according to Buch, “ Kashmir hum haar gaye (we have lost Kashmir).”

The decision to go into Kashmir was taken at a meeting in Lahore presided over by Liaquat Ali Khan and attended by Sardar Shaukat Hyat, Khurshid Anwar and Akbar Khan (later a general and one of the Pindi “conspiracy” case people).” After the meeting, Khurshid Anwar said, “I am not going to listen to Shaukat.” He was a loner when it came to command. Buch said he had uncanny courage but he had no capacity for political thinking.

Khurshid Anwar also told Buch ,”The old man never gave it the green light,” the “old man” being the Quaid who had not been told by Liaquat of the tribal incursion. Khurshid Anwar was injured in Kashmir and ultimately died of those wounds which had resulted in long-term poisoning. After the Kashmir war was over, Khurshid Anwar found himself persona non grata with the Pakistani government and remained an outsider till he died. He had in the last few years set up an ice factory in Rawalpindi. He had also married the quite lovely Mumtaz Jamal, a Pathan. I asked Buch what would have happened if the tribal incursion into Kashmir had not taken place, “There would have been a massacre of Muslims in Muzaffarabad. Elaborate plans approved by the Maharaja were ready, the idea being to discourage other Muslims in the state from revolting. The Muslims of Jammu had already been by and large liquidated,” he replied.

Khurshid Anwar belonged to Kapurthala. He is buried in the graveyard across the road from Liaquat Garden, Rawalpindi, in case someone who reads this would like to go and place a handful of flowers on the grave of this driven soldier and patriot.

Every year on the third day of February, exactly two days after the national Groundhog Day, there is held in Washington the national prayer breakfast to which thousands of people come, most to have breakfast, some indeed to pray, although a church, synagogue, temple or mosque, being the Almighty’s officially and divinely declared homes, would be better from a communications point of view.

Americans are much into religion, prayer, flag-waving and junk food. They have also given the world that most un-English practice of breakfast meetings. An English gentleman — some examples of the breed still exist despite everything being against it — never exchanged a word or even a smile with anyone before breakfast. The morning was not good or to be so declared through a greeting unless after breakfast proper and a couple of hot cups of tea to lay to rest what had been left on the palette or on the mind from the evening before. An Englishman or a brown Englishman, as the late Mumtaz Hasan used to call himself when in a good mood, would rather have kissed the hangman’s noose before throwing it around his neck than got into a conversation before breakfast. The Americans changed all that and there is no question they will answer for it on judgment day.

For some years now, those sitting down to coffee and Danish at an ungodly hour in the thick of winter in downtown Washington have included Pakistanis. Why they travel thousands of miles to have a tepid cup of coffee and, if lucky, catch a glimpse of the President from a distance of what would surely be several hundred metres, I am unable to either explain or to understand. Justice Nasim Hasan Shah used to be a regular, though I am prepared to wager lunch that only on a rare day would he have been caught raising his hands heavenwards. Last year, our distinguished information minister and the sole spokesman of the government of Gen Musharraf and Mr Shaukat Aziz (what awesome responsibility!) landed in Washington. Before his arrival, a number of reports had appeared in the press that he was on his way to Washington to meet the President.

Well, being curious and not willing to let such a great history-making opportunity slip me by, I prodded around for information about the great event and nearly fell off my chair when I was told that if I wanted to catch a glimpse of the Farzand-e-Rawalpindi whose hair refuse to go grey or even thin, thus defying the known laws of physiology, I would find him occupying Table No 32.

As I wrote last week, a whiff of doubt has arisen in my heart about the efficacy of prayer since the Almighty refused to oblige 48 percent of the population of the United States and almost the entire population of the rest of the world (except Tony Blair) who wanted George W Bush to be defeated. That being the case, can someone explain to me why the venerable Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan and “Barrister” Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry are in town as I write these lines on a dull Wednesday afternoon. Someone who is on a hotline to the Invisible Soldiers Inc all the way to Islamabad tells me that the two Kashmiri leaders are here to join the national prayer breakfast. I suppose since all else has failed to gain the Kashmiris their freedom, this last remedy should have been tried. After all, who knows a prayer offered in Washington under the same roof as Boy George and Dick Pacemaker might find acceptance in the heavenly court.

If that happens, Sardar Abdul Qayyum could put down the gun he has been carrying all these years and retire to the calm of his ancestral village of Ghaziabad. The gun, I should add, is the self-same weapon from which he is said to have fired the first shot against the Maharaja’s rule and earned the title of First Warrior.

As for “Barrister” SM Chaudhry, I am afraid he could prove to be the fly in the ointment. Let me explain why. One day his secretary informed Sardar Qayyum that a number of People’s Party leaders had been slotted to see him first thing in the morning. Sardar Qayyum’s reply, delivered with a straight face, was, “You should have given them some time in the afternoon. You see PPP-walas are not exactly early risers.” That being so, one hopes the “Barrister” would remember that if the night before is carried into the small hours, he would have travelled all the way from Pakistan only to sleep through the great prayer fest in the morning.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

The year 2004 was the hundredth anniversary of KL Saigal’s birth, but it went unmarked in Pakistan. Some time earlier I had asked music aficionado Saeed Malik in Lahore if he could perhaps get a group together to celebrate the memory of the greatest popular singer of the subcontinent. He said he would try, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to generate much enthusiasm for the effort. That says more about us as a country and a society than a dozen learned books can. There is little interest in such matters. Some may even have asked Saeed Malik: who was Saigal and what does it matter that he was born a hundred years ago!

Saigal had many associations with Lahore and it would have done both Saigal’s and the city’s soul a world of good had an attempt, even a modest one, been made to revive his memory. However, it was left to a son of Lahore to pay tribute to this great man, his music and his artistic achievement. As the year drew to a close, Pran Nevile in New Delhi published a handsome book on Saigal that recreates those times when Saigal’s voice reverberated from one corner of India to another. Pran Nevile was born in Lahore, grew up in Lahore, went to Government College and did not leave the city until the 1947 communal conflagration. But wherever he has lived, he has carried Lahore with him. Some years ago, he published a book on the Lahore of his days and what it was like. An equally evocative book on the city has been written by another old Lahori who also lives in India. Those who live in Lahore have no time for such things, which are the only things that in the end matter.

Nevile’s profusely illustrated book contains old stills from Saigal’s movies, contemporary newspaper accounts and even facsimiles of movie posters and ads, including one from the year 1937 when Saigal was in Lahore, the only time he performed in the city. The occasion was the All India Exhibition at Minto Park. Nevile’s memory of that magical evening remains vivid. He writes, “Saigal, loaded with garlands, walks up to the stage, followed by a person carrying the singer’s personal harmonium. He is dressed in a tweed jacket and a polo neck sweater with a brown felt hat over his head. He takes off his hat and removes the garlands. His gray eyes light up; he greets the audience with his winning smile. There is an outburst of applause … Saigal takes charge of his harmonium and pin-drop silence prevails as his regal voice rents the air with his famous song ‘ Lag gai chot karejwa mein, hai Rama’. He follows it with ‘ Andhe ki lathi tu hi hai’. Scores of requests for singing other popular songs are made from all sides of the hall. Some of Saigal’s fans stand up on chairs and benches to catch his attention.”

There is much confusion till an organiser suggests that the choice of what he will sing should be left to the great man. Saigal smiles, looks at the audience and sings a succession of ghazals, including ‘ Ye tasuruff Allah Allah’, ‘ Layi hayat aaye qaza’ and ‘ Dil se teri nigha’. At the end of every song, he receives standing ovation from the enthralled audience. He ends the evening with ‘ Panchhi kahe hoat udas’. Neil writes, “Saigal’s voice was a gift from the gods. He became a legend in his own lifetime, and the idol of countless millions. I was fortunate enough to have seen and heard Saigal. He is alive in our hearts even today, his melodies will continue to haunt us. Saigal is immortal.”

Those of us who come from Jammu should feel a special affinity with Saigal since he was born in Jammu in April 1904. It is said that as a boy he used to sneak away from home and stand outside the house of a singing girl – their quarter in the city was called Urdu Bazar that still exists but, sadly, without the women who give it life and light – and listen to her spellbound. He never received any formal training but he was encouraged and guided by Sufi Pir Salman Yusuf of Jammu. Saigal it was, who popularised ghazal singing, so in more than one way, he was a pioneer. He was also a poet. Nevile includes the facsimile of one of Saigal’s poems written in his own hand on letterheaded paper which begins, “ Ab dil ko nahin hai chain zara – Pardes mein rehnay wale aa.” He also wrote and sang ‘ Mein baithi thi phulwari mein’, recorded on both sides of a 78 rpm disc, the kind that the young of today may never have even seen.

Saigal’s first hit was the semi-classical song ‘ Jhulna Jhulao’which sold half a million copies, a figure that would be phenomenal even today, but in the 1930s when very few people had gramophones, it was absolutely incredible. Saigal was also the first artist to sign a contract with his recording company that entitled him to payments on a royalty basis. Saigal’s film songs were recorded on the HMV label by the Gramophone Company of India.

Saigal was utterly self-effacing. He once told Kirit Ghosh, a Calcutta journalist, “I think of the meaning of the words and wrap the tune around the words. I have no clear understanding of the grammar of music.” Asked about his favourite raga, he said it was Bhairvin which musicians have called sada sohagan, the eternal bride. “To know Bhairvin is to know all ragas,” he said. He was not the only one to feel that way. Ustad Jhanday Khan, who came from Gujranwala, set all 12 songs of Kedar Sharma’s Chitralekha in Bhairvin, a feat that has remained one of a kind.

The music for Saigal’s last film Parwana was scored by Khwaja Khurshid Anwar. Saigal, who was quite ill by then, played the lead, his heroine being Surayya whose ‘ Meray mudairay na bol’ remains one of her best songs. Saadat Hasan Manto always regretted the fact that two of the greatest singers of their time, Saigal and Nur Jehan, could never be teamed up. However, he did team up with Khurshid in more than one film. In Tansen she was his leading lady with music by Khemchand Prakash. I wonder how many people know or remember that the velvet-voiced Khurshid was born in Chuniyan, not far from Lahore. In all Saigal made 28 films, the first in 1932 with music by RC Boral, the great music director at New Theatre, Calcutta, who scored music for 11 of Saigal’s movies. Pankaj Malik, also then at New Theatres, wrote music for five of the films starring Saigal. Naushad was his music director in AR Kardar’s Shahjahan which starred Ragini, who lives in Lahore, Nasrin, Salma Agha’s mother, who died not very long ago and Himalyawala, who in his last days was selling properties out of a small office in Gulburg’s main market, which always made me sad.

In the end, Saigal, like Manto, succumbed to the demon of drink. He died at Jullandhar on 18 January 1947. He was the same age as Manto, just 43 years old. It is humbling to think how much the two men accomplished in the brief time they were allowed on this earth, but no matter, Saigal’s music lives as do Manto’s stories.

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