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The mystery is resolved, at least for me. The secret of Jimmy Engineer’s waistline is out. He walks, which is what everyone losing the battle of the bulge should do. The man in the long flowing kurta, a Taliban-style beard and a score of causes to sell was in Washington last week, where the embassy ensnared him — or perhaps it was the other way around — into mounting an exhibition of his prints.

Why prints, one might well ask because painters bring paintings to their exhibitions, not prints. Here is Jimmy Engineer’s answer: “My canvases are so large that they cannot be lugged around.” However, he offered any who were interested, provided the cause was a good one, a CD of his prints, which he said would be as good as his paintings. Or maybe he said the CD of his paintings would be as good as his prints.

This was my first sighting of Jimmy Engineer. So far I had only read about him and I wasn’t sure if he was for real. Am I sure now? I am not sure if I am sure. Jimmy Engineer is a Parsi and all Parsis are good people. Someone asked Jimmy if he was an engineer (trust a Pakistani to ask a smart question like this). “I am not an engineer but my father and grandfathers were. Among us Zorastrians, it was the custom to adopt the name of your profession as your family name,” he said, and he was right. Sohrab Junglewala or his ancestor thus, must have been a forester at one time. Then to avoid being asked if Jimmy was short for Jamshed (as in Jamshed Marker), he said Jimmy was the name he was given at birth, so it wasn’t short for anything. Jimmy was Jimmy. There were no further questions about his name from his audience, which was a relief.

Jimmy Engineer said he was born in Loralei, Balochistan seven years after Pakistan. Why wasn’t he living in Balochistan, asked another bright Pakistani? Jimmy replied that he was not of just one place. He wanted to be everywhere, and often was. Then someone else asked why he had gone to FC College in Lahore and not the other place, which now carries the mystifying suffix university, as if college wasn’t enough clue as to what it is. Jimmy replied that in class he was always drawing something or other. His teachers at FC College waited for three years before advising him to go to the National College of Arts, which he did but left after a couple of years as he felt that he was already artist enough to venture out on his own.

Jimmy said when he was six, his kidneys failed and the doctors told his parents that their son was as good as dead. But then something very odd, if not miraculous, happened, and happened on its own. His kidneys healed themselves, which is what makes Jimmy believe that he was saved for a purpose. “Since I had been given a second life, I decided that I would live it as a servant of Pakistan and its people, which is all I am,” he said. He added that he had never exhibited in a commercial gallery and his only sales were sales for charity.

And now about his walking. He said in 1994, he had decided to walk from one end of Pakistan to another to get to know the people and their sufferings. It had taken him a year and he had walked 4,700 kilometres, taking indirect, circuitous routes so as to see everything. Before another Pakistani could ask when he was going to become a Muslim, Jimmy Engineer said, “I accept all religions as my personal religions. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism.” He was careful not to mention Hinduism otherwise some warrior of the faith might have called for the expulsion of “this perfidious Injun”.

Jimmy said around 1974 when he was 20 years old, he began to dream of refugees crossing into Pakistan after abandoning their homes where overnight they had been turned into aliens. He would dream about their great ordeal and how hundreds of thousands of them had perished on their way to what they believed was the Promised Land. He was so troubled by his dreams, which were more nightmares than dreams, that he went to see Sufi Barkat Ali of Salarwala, truly a man of God, what he should do. “Get it out of your system or you will remain restless all your life,” he told Jimmy. And that is why he painted his 1947 murals. He added that he had painted them as they had come to him in his dreams.

Jimmy Engineer has painted 2,000 canvases and murals. He is no Sadequain, but at the very least he can be the poor man’s Sadequain. He has done scores of charity walks for every good cause there is. Some people have compared Jimmy Engineer to J Salik. Maybe the two have something in common. Perhaps it is their lack of self-absorption, their eccentricity and their interest in things other than their personal welfare. If Jimmy Engineer is a hoax and a mountebank, why are there not more Jimmy Engineers in Pakistan? Wouldn’t it be a better country if there were more Jimmy Engineers and fewer housing estate developers?

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

It was a wonderful early winter day, sunny and warm, the sky a deep blue, no smoke, no dust, just divinity itself. We were fielding, having won the toss and put in our hosts, the Rabwah Cricket XI, to bat. We had travelled by train from Sialkot to play a couple of matches, the tour having been arranged by one of the city’s sports enthusiasts, Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq, who was also Sialkot’s sole auctioneer. In his time he was a hockey player of note and later a first-class referee. In the 1930s, he had crossed into Kashmir to join the uprising against Maharaja Hari Singh’s repressive rule.

Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq (Maulvi Neelaam to everyone in Sialkot, though never to his face, that being the unwritten rule governing nicknames) had organised the trip to Rabwah. We had been received with warmth and put up in a student hostel where we made enough noise to keep everyone up half the night. There wasn’t much grass on the ground, Rabwah not being the greenest place on earth. But the ground was level and the wicket had been well-rolled. The openers walked in. Hamad Khan – Hamo to everyone – walked up to the start of his long run, rubbing the new ball against the side of his trousers for extra, though unnecessary, shine. The opener, who was to take the strike, took his guard – leg and middle – and was ready to face whatever was coming his way. Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq, who was fielding at mid-on, walked up to Hamo and whispered to him, “Take it easy, don’t get up to any of your tricks such as bouncers. Let the lads get a few runs.” Hamo, irrepressible on and off the field asked Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq, “Why? Are they the Paighambar’s sons!” “Shut up Hamo and no tricks,” Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq shot back. Hamo was not off the mark. Nearly half the team we were playing was made up of Mirza sahib’s immediate family. Hamo got the opener with his fifth delivery in the second over and had Maulvi Zahoor-ul-Haq had a gun at the time, he would have shot Hamo with the greatest happiness.

The memory of that day nearly half a century ago has come to me because a one line email from Jehangir “Jango” Khan informs me that Hamo has died in Rawalpindi. Another cricketing Khan gone, writes Jango, reminding me of what I wrote when another cricketing brother, Khalid “Khalo” Khan, died a couple of years ago. I have one more memory of that Rabwah tour. We were shown great hospitality, but for some reason our meals always featured cauliflower curry. When we were ready to return, our hosts told us that an entire train car had been reserved for us. Agha Wasim, Hamo’s cousin and a great wit, said, “But there was no need to do that. Having been fed on cauliflower since our arrival, we could easily have flown back to Sialkot.”

The cricketing Khans of Sialkot’s Beriwala Chowk were a unique family. Every male member was a cricketer, including the patriarch Feroz Khan, who wielded a mean bat. The uncles, Aziz Khan, Hamid Khan and Major Aftab Ahmed Khan were all cricketers. Asking if Hamid Khan was a chucker is like asking, “is the sky blue?” His view, of course, was that anyone who bowled a lesser off-break was no bowler and anyone who bowled a longer one was a nut. Aftab Ahmed Khan, Hamid Khan’s youngest brother, who played for the Northern India Cricket Association and also, I think, the Bombay Pentangular, was a terrific all-rounder. He bowled leg breaks and the occasional “wrong ’un.” He once scored a classic century for Islamia College in a cliffhanger of a final against Government College and was shoulder-carried by the jubilant Islamia College students through the streets of Lahore. He also took 12 wickets in that memorable match. He later went to Aligarh University and helped it beat the formidable Punjab University to win the Rowlinton-Baria Trophy. He also played for the Maharaja of Patiala XI for several years.

Then there were the nephews, who all lived in Beriwala Chowk in the city, a 15-minute walk to Connlley Park (always called Kanglay Park). There was Maqbool Javed “Boola” with his acerbic wit, who turned the ball both ways and could always be counted to play crisp innings taking, what Omar Kureishi used to call, “cheeky singles.” Tahir Khan, “Taro,” was the only one from amongst the six Khan brothers who was into pigeons, not cricket. Khalid Khan “Khalo,” a contemporary of A.H. Kardar, Imtiaz Ahmed, Maqsood Ahmed and Khan Muhammad, was such a stylish batsman that the only one who could stand comparison with him was Nazar Muhammad, who scored the first Test century for Pakistan against India.

Jango Khan once told me that he had asked “Mama Hamid” about Khalo’s best innings. Hamid Khan took a long drag at his cheroot and said, “It was in 1942 and we had taken the City Club XI to Amritsar to play in the Amritsar Tournament where Khalo got a scintillating hundred, hitting Munawar Ali “Mannay” Khan imperiously and at will all around the wicket.” Mannay Khan, who played for Pakistan for a few years, was the fastest bowler to have come up after Mohammad Nisar, who was faster than Larwood, though the British never admitted it. In 1942, according to Hamid Khan, Manny Khan was the fastest in India.

“Hamo,” tall and green-eyed, bowled fast and could hit a few out of the ground if and when needed. Babar Khan, who was younger than him, but had no nickname, was what is called a safe all-rounder. The youngest, Jehangir Khan “Jango,” bowled at brisk medium pace and could make every stroke in the book. Two other fine cricketers from the Khan family were the brothers Agha Mumtaz and Agha Sarfraz. Agha Mumtaz played for the Northern India Cricket Association, which represented areas that constitute today’s Pakistan. He, like Khalo, was a stylist, something given to only a few. Javed Miandad was a great batsman but he was not stylish. Majid Khan was both a great batsman and a stylist. Agha Sarfraz, who turned to mysticism in his later life, bowled leg breaks, off breaks and the “wrong ‘un.” He would always massage his right wrist with oil to give it flexibility. Agha Mumtaz’s son Agha Afzaal “Jaalo” was a fine all-rounder.

All that there once was of the Sialkot cricket that we knew and loved now lives in another dimension of time. But there are moments one remembers. There is Aga Saadat Aly, another great stylist, coming in to bat on a cold morning and executing cover drives and square cuts that send the ball across the ropes as if it were a bullet. And few who were there can forget the first time Hanif Muhammad came to Sialkot, when 16-year old Salim Mirza clean bowled him with an absolute beauty. Hanif just stood there for a few moments, sometimes looking at his stumps, one of which lay flat on the ground and sometimes at the slip of a boy who had run through his impregnable defence like a knife through butter. Sialkot has produced many cricketers, including the new Pakistan captain, but what it will never produce again is another family of Cricketing Khans.

This is getting serious. Teenagers have been asked to pull up their pants at the very least to the point where their waistline lies, assuming they have a waistline. Teenagers drink so much soda (every soft drink in America is called soda, whereas in Pakistan, soda is what you mix bootleg whiskey with) with every meal that excess weight is now a huge concern, primarily of doctors and other busybodies in white coats.

The rest of the population, teenagers and adults alike, continues to, well, flourish. What threatens America, it has been said, is not the looming recession or the foreclosures or Osama bin Laden, and much less the prospect of Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama’s running mate (he won’t need to look for an exterminating angel thereafter) but obesity. The word obesity is a smart word for fat. What those three dread letters F A T express, the fancier substitutes O B E S I T Y do not. Clearly, if you want shock and awe, then the word is fat, not obesity.

Teenagers in America — and thanks to the international teenage bush wire, teenagers almost everywhere — have not only taken to wearing pants baggy enough to accommodate three life-sized Paris Hiltons in each leg, they are also wearing them well, well below the point whose exposure in Saudi Arabia, for instance, will earn them a dozen strokes of the lash (genuine leather, thanks to soaring oil prices) on a Friday afternoon in the city square.

Is something is being done about it (fat not lashes)? Yes.

The Florida Senate has just passed a bill that could mean, reports Reuters, suspensions for students with “droopy britches”. It is not law yet as the Florida House of Representatives also needs to pass the measure. Florida is the latest but not the first to make an attempt to get teenagers to pull up their pants. Several towns and cities have passed “saggy pants” laws aimed at outlawing what some teenagers consider a fashion statement — wearing pants half way down their buttocks, exposing flesh or underwear, reports Reuters. “Despite being the butt of jokes, the bill’s sponsor, Orlando Senator Gary Siplin, a Democrat, has said the fashion statement has a back-story.”

It turns out that below-the-beltline pants were made popular by rap artists after first appearing among prison inmates as a signal that they were looking for what was not otherwise permitted. Siplin thinks that if kids can be made to pull up “them saggy pants”, it would help them get jobs and degrees. He is assuming they want jobs and degrees. My fear is that if the Florida do-gooders keep pushing, they may soon find the entire teenage population of the state in revolt, which could manifest itself in the elimination of pants altogether. While the odd streaker at a sports event can be chased, caught, covered and taken away by a few cops, caught, what are they going to do if an entire high school were to decide to go streaking? Senator Siplin will be well advised, therefore, not to mess with the saggy pants crowd.

But let me move from drooping trousers and scowling teenagers to politics. The Obama-Clinton race to grab the Democratic Party nomination has been reduced to two words. While Hillary keeps crowing about her experience, Obama can’t stop calling for change. The way she goes on and on about her experience, you would think it was she and not Bill who was president for eight years.

The other day, she claimed that she had played a role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. It turned out that her role in the main had consisted of being under the same roof as the negotiators. She did not sit in on any of the meetings. But since when have politicians been known not to claim that but for them the sky would fall down.

Obama on the other hand keeps harping on change, finally forcing America’s principal satirical magazine, The Onion, to run a hilarious piece on this change business.

“According to witnesses,” goes a write-up, “a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change. ‘The time for change is now,’ said the black guy, yelling at everyone within earshot for 20 straight minutes, practically begging America for change. ‘The need for change is stronger and more urgent than ever before. And only you — the people standing here today, and indeed all the people of this great nation — only you can deliver this change.’ It is estimated that, to date, the black man has asked every single person in the United States for change. ‘I’ve already seen this guy four times today,’ Chicago-area ad salesman Blake Gordon said. ‘Every time, it’s the same exact spiel. “I need change.” “I want change.” Why’s he so eager for all this change? What’s he going to do with it, anyway?’”

The Onion continues, “Reports indicate that the black man has been riding from city to city across the country, asking for change wherever he goes. Citizens in Austin, Texas, said they spotted the same guy standing on the street Friday, shouting far-fetched ideas about global warming. Cleveland residents also reported seeing him in a local park, wildly gesticulating and quoting from the Bible. And last week, patrons at the Starlight Diner in Cheyenne, Wyoming, claimed that the black man accosted them while they were eating, repeatedly requesting change. ‘I saw him walk in and I knew he was headed straight for our table,’ said mother of three Gladys Davies. ‘He just stood there smiling at us for a while, and asked how our food tasted. Then he went and did the same thing at the next table over. The nerve of some people.’ Those who encountered the black man Tuesday said he engaged in erratic behaviour, including pointing at random people in the crowd and desperately saying he needs their help, going up to complete strangers and hugging them, and angrily claiming that he is not looking for just a little bit of change, but rather a great deal of change, and that he wants it ‘right now’”.

So how does this end? Cut to William Overkamp, who owns a gun shop in Springfield, Ohio. “I’m a hardworking American who pays his taxes, and the last thing I need is some guy on the street demanding change from me,” said Overkamp. Then he added, “What he really needs is a job.” To which I add: And if the black man who wants change wins the Philadelphia primary, come April 22, he may well land the job Overkamp says he needs.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

I first came upon Pran Nevile when Saeed Ahmed Khan, a gentleman from Lahore, whom I unfortunately never met but with whom I used to correspond, told me about him. He said the two of them were classmates back in the old days and the best of friends. He also sent me two or three clips of Pran Nevile’s Lahore reminiscences. Some time later, I was able to lay my hands on his book, Lahore, a sentimental journey, and we began to write to each other. Some years ago, he came to the United States and we met. On my last visit to New Delhi I spent time with him and his family and we talked about many things, but mostly Lahore. Pran Nevile is and has been a “ chalta phirta Lahore” as Saadat Hasan Manto was a “ chalta phirta Bumbaii”.

Pran told me that in all the years he had been away from Lahore, there wasn’t a day when he had not remembered and longed for the city where he was born, where he had played as a child, where he had spent his early youth and where he had gone to college. Lahore has been the love of his life. Last year when he came to Lahore, his third visit, he brought his grandson and his daughter-in-law with him so that he could show them “my city.” This time, what had brought him back was the release of the official Pakistan edition of his Lahore book. Pran Nevile also recorded a long interview with the progressive journal Awami Jamhoor Forum, in the course of which he remembered Lahore as it was and as he had found it.

Pran said it had taken him 51 years to return to Lahore. The year of his return, something he had waited for and dreamed about all along, was 1997. When asked if he agreed that Lahore (which to him has always been “Le-hore”) had changed, he replied, “That may be true but man himself has changed, so has the world. Hasn’t London changed in the last 50 years? There is no city in the Subcontinent that has remained the same during these 50 years. Change is part of life. I don’t say that those times were better and these times are not. Every age has its high and low points. While the present generation should know the past, the old generation should learn from the present and move on. I am not one of those who find fault with everything contemporary. I don’t bore the young of today by telling them, for example, that pop music is rubbish and there has been no voice like that of the old Nur Jehan. I never bring these things up, which is why the young like me.”

Pran said he was delighted with the way the city looked today. “The way you have maintained and taken care of the Mall’s upkeep is a wonderful sight to behold. From Charing Cross to Tollinton Market, the Mall has been preserved. What changes have been brought about, I find most pleasing. The Dinga Singh Building, which is Lahore’s hallmark, is still where it was. The High Court, the Sir Ganga Ram Trust Building, the Laxami Mansion, the Dyal Singh Mansion are all still standing.” He recalled that when some people wanted to demolish Tollinton Market, he too joined hands with the Lahore Conservation Society to save this historic 125-year old Lahore landmark. After all, it was built by the people of Lahore and it belonged to them. Nobody had any right to bring it down.

Asked about his childhood, Pran said that he was born in Lahore and the family lived in Jwaharian di Galli, which branched out from Gumti Bazaar. The family then moved to Chah Teliyaan, next to the Vachoowali Bazaar. The next move was to Sutar Mandi, from where after eight years they moved to Nisbat Road, one of Lahore’s finest residential areas in those days, and almost entirely Hindu (after 1947, most of the abandoned homes were occupied by Amritsari refugees). They lived on 35 Nisbat Road, just next to Dyal Singh College. The house still stands. Pran said, “The Lahore that lives in my heart is the same Lahore. It has the same air, the same people, the same bit of earth. People still talk the way they used to talk. The atmosphere is unchanged. My childhood was spent in “Le-hori” Darwaza and a visit there is to me like a pilgrimage. I only feel at peace after I have felt the old city’s fragrance touch my soul.”

When independence came, Pran was not in the city, having already found a job in Delhi, but his father, a civil servant who opted to stay in Pakistan, was in Lahore. When riots engulfed Lahore in June and July 1947, Pran’s siblings moved to Delhi but his parents refused to leave. Finally, on the advice of their Muslim friends, they left, certain in the knowledge that they would return in a couple of weeks after things quietened down. That has been the tragedy of partition. Everyone who moved, as Pran’s parents did, believed that it was just a matter of time before they returned to the homes they had always lived in and the people they had always lived amongst. It was never to come about. My own family, moving from Srinagar to Jammu via the Jehlum Valley Road, got stranded in Sialkot, secure in the belief that the 28 miles between Sialkot and Jammu, they would be able to cover after the excitement of independence had died down. That day never came and my father and two older brothers died longing for the land of their birth. Those 28 miles between Sialkot and Jammu could as well have been 28 million miles.

Pran said before 1946, there was no Hindu-Muslim tension in Lahore. The riots began in Rawalpindi and the areas around it, then moved to Lahore. Pran is philosophical. “Look, what has happened we cannot change. It was a great human tragedy but we should not look for conspiracies. Perhaps this was the fate of us Punjabis, because it was the Punjabis who paid the greatest price for the division of the country, for the independence of India, for the establishment of Pakistan. When the two governments were celebrating their independence, the people of Punjab were looking for the dead bodies of their dear ones, while hoping that they were still alive.” He agreed with the interviewer that it was only Punjab where non-Muslim Punjabis went to India and Muslim Punjabis moved to Pakistan. The Bengalis of Bengal did not move from one side to the other. Not really.

Pran said when he came to Lahore for the first time, he looked down at the city as the PIA plane from Delhi flew over it. It was evening and below him lay his city of lights. “I felt that I was finally home.”

The poorer a country is, the more scant the regard those who preside over its affairs seem to have for public funds. The taxpayer in whose name all is done is nothing more than a depersonalised entity, a cliché, an irrelevance, a cipher. Each penny spent by those holding positions of governance out of the state exchequer should be a penny spent in the public interest. Sadly, it is not so.

Over the years, our elected and unelected governments have become increasingly profligate, their leaders spending public money as if there was no tomorrow. There is no questioning of what they do. Legislatures, what there has been of them, have been either powerless or disinterested. And on the rare occasions when they have asked questions as to the need or justification of government expenditure, they have been ignored. In one case, not long ago, a certain quasi-public establishment simply refused to appear before a committee of the legislature when summoned to answer a few questions concerning the financial propriety of some of its activities.

In the early years of Pakistan, public funds were spent with the utmost meticulousness. The first prime minister of Pakistan, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, who donated his personal residence in New Delhi to serve as the high commissioner’s residence and who after his assassination was found to have left not more than a couple of hundred rupees in the bank, was refused the slight increase he had once sought in his sumptuary allowance. I think it was Mumtaz Hasan, joint secretary at the finance ministry, who had turned down the prime minister.

Can this be imagined today? From my own experience I recall that when Aziz Ahmed visited Canada in 1976 to negotiate important business with the Canadian government, the embassy got him a double room in one of the city hotels. He was furious at this waste of public money and insisted on getting a single room. “I just need enough space to say my morning prayers and the bit of yoga I do,” he said. A single room was finally found. I recall the assistant manager saying to me, “Was there something about the double room that His Excellency the foreign minister did not approve of?” “No, all His Excellency wants is a single room without frills,” I told him. I compare that with the Dorchester Hotel, London’s Sultan of Brunei suite that the president stayed in last month, which cost 6,500 pounds (not 17,000 pounds as reported) a night.

Last week, I wrote about the travels of our presidents and prime ministers, which triggered a few responses, one of them from a journalist who has travelled with many of our heads of state. He writes, “Yours was a timely warning to the incoming government before its members set their sights on distant lands, mostly in the West. But I fear that they will prove as shameless as their predecessors were. Over the years, we have seen things deteriorate, not improve. One thinks of Shaukat Aziz’s disastrous trip to New York with over 45 hangers on to attend a UN meeting in a room with a capacity to seat a total of 40 people. Only two of his party were allowed in. Then President Musharraf created a record by remaining abroad for a full 19 days, with nearly half the period devoted to the promotion of his book. May I add that most of the “Mansura-cleared journalists” with Gen Zia-ul Haq ended up by running up high hotel bills for watching hard porn movies. Once in Toronto, the highest bill was logged by a long-bearded gentleman from Peshawar. Most of these Zia favourites were often to be seen in New York’s notorious 42nd Street.

ZAB did start the tradition of large media delegations, but his direction was less towards the West and more towards Asia and Africa. Besides, ZAB always somehow found the time to read all the reports being filed about his ongoing visit. Once in Beijing, he asked an agency reporter at a Pakistan embassy reception why he was long on one important point and short on an equally important one. The reporter replied that by the time he had reached the second point, the newspapers in Pakistan had gone to bed. He promised to file the uncovered part the next day. ZAB had similar inquiries from other reporters on his trips. He made those he took with him work, whether they were journalists or ministers.”

Capt Javed Muzaffar, a retired PIA captain who lives in Houston wrote, “Once I had Begum Shafiqa Zia travelling on a routine DC-10 commercial flight from Islamabad to London. I was the operating captain. She was going for medical treatment. The traffic staff informed me that she was carrying 11 enormous suitcases (no extra baggage charges had been paid). Before take-off, I saw her sprawled on two first class seats. Gen Zia had come to see her off and he waved to me from the tarmac. Another time, I had to ferry back a VVIP configured DC-10 from Islamabad to Karachi after Gen Zia and his entourage had deplaned. I was astounded when I boarded the aircraft, wondering if it was the same DC-10 I knew so well. There were leather seats, plush carpets, a conference room, new curtains, a large curtained-off bedroom area, special cutlery and crockery and what have you. The leftover food my skeleton crew and I were served was out of this world. I just could not help thinking about the enormous cost of all that to our poor nation.

“It seems that the general public does not know that whenever a PIA aircraft is requisitioned for VVIP travel, it is luxuriously “refurbished”, only to be reconfigured later for the plebians who pay to fly. There are already 15 aircraft, including helicopters, in the Pakistani VVIP fleet. There is a Boeing 707, an almost new luxuriously fitted Boeing 737, a Falcon executive jet, a Cessna Citation and an Airbus 310 gifted by Qatar. On top of that, three new Learjets have been purchased recently at a cost of $60 million. I would ask readers to think about the astronomical cost of hangaring, maintaining, certifying, fuelling, crewing and catering involved here. Take India. Once I was parked in an Airbus 300 at Bombay Airport when I saw an Indian Airline Airbus taxiing in. It was a normal passenger flight. The door opened and out walked Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi. One man took her briefcase, another held an umbrella over her head and she got into a beat-up white Ambassador and drove away.”

Perhaps therein lies the difference between the two neighbours.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

Ryszard Kapuscinski, the great Polish journalist who died last year, witnessed 27 coups and revolutions and was sentenced to death four times. He became friends with Che Guevara, Salvadore Allende and Patrice Lumumba. There were few world leaders he did not know in person.

If there ever was a reporter’s reporter, without doubt it was Kapuscinski. Salman Rushdie said of him, “One Kapuscinski is worth more than a thousand whimpering and fantasising scribblers. His exceptional combination of journalism and art allows us to feel so close to what Kapuscinski calls the inexpressible true image of war.” Once he told an interviewer that he really wrote for “people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world.” Among his best known works is The Emperor , about the decline and fall of the anachronistic empire of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. But the book that would remain the most profound analysis of authoritarian rulers and why they fail to see what is obvious to the whole world is the one he wrote about the Shah of Iran. He called it Shah of Shahs . First published in 1982, it has been translated into numerous languages and undergone many reprints. He wrote in Polish but had the good fortune of finding wonderful translators who were able to bring out the high drama and sensitivity of his writing into other languages.

The English translators of Kapuscinski’s Shah book, William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand, deserve a medal for their superb rendition of this master work. I first read it last year, but have been reading it again since the dramatic events in Pakistan began to unfold, culminating in the February 18 elections, the fall of the ruling party and what looks like growing pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to call it a day. I wanted to remind myself what Kapuscinski had written about absolute rulers and why they find it so hard to leave when it is time to do so.

Kapuscinski writes, “Although dictatorship despises the people, it takes pains to win their recognition. In spite of being lawless – or rather, because it is lawless – it strives for the appearance of legality. On this point it is exceedingly touchy, morbidly oversensitive. Moreover, it suffers from a feeling (however deeply hidden) of inferiority. So it spares no pains to demonstrate to itself and others the popular approval it enjoys. Even if this support is a mere charade, it feels satisfying. So what if it’s only in appearance. The world of dictatorship is full of appearances.”

About the Shah he writes that he was irresolute but resolute about retaining his throne and to that end, he explored every possibility. He tried to shoot people down and he tried to democratise. He locked people up and he released them. He fired some and he promoted others. He threatened and he commended. In short, he tried everything but what he would not understand was that the people simply did not want him. They did not want his kind of authority. Kapuscinski writes, “The Shah’s vanity did him in. He thought of himself as the father of the country, but the country rose against him. He took it to heart and felt it keenly. At any price (unfortunately, even blood), he wanted to restore the former image, cherished for years, of a happy people prostrate in gratitude before their benefactor. But he forgot that we are living in times when people demand rights, not grace.”

According to Kapuscinski, the Shah perished because he took himself too seriously. He believed that the people worshipped him and thought of him as the best and worthiest part of themselves. He could not just believe that they had revolted. It led him to violent, hysterical and mad decisions. The Shah was impatient. He did not want to wait. And in politics you have to know how to wait. Kapuscinski believes that another reason for the Shah’s fall was that he did not really know his own country. He would step out of the palace and then step right back him. Kapuscinski writes that the structure of destructive and deforming laws that operates in the life of all palaces has always remained the same. “So it has been from time immemorial, so it is and shall be. You can build ten new palaces, but as soon as they are finished they become subject to the same laws that existed in the palaces built five thousand years ago. The only solution is to treat the palace as a temporary abode, the same way you treat a streetcar or a bus. You get in, you ride a while, and then off you get. And it’s very good to remember to get off at the right stop and not ride too far.”

Kapuscinski points out that the most difficult thing to do while living in a palace is to imagine a different life, a life outside the palace, a life without the palace. But few want to leave when it is time to do so. He cites Charles de Gaulle as an example. “Take de Gaulle – a man of honour. He lost a referendum, tidied up his desk, and left the palace, never to return. He wanted to govern only under the condition that the majority accept him. The moment the majority refused him their trust, he left. But how many are like him? The others will cry, but they won’t move; they’ll torment the nation, but they won’t budge. Thrown out one door, they sneak in through another; kicked down the stairs, they begin to crawl back up. They will excuse themselves now and scrape, lie and simper, provided they can stay – or provided they can return. They will hold out their hands – Look, no blood on them. But the very fact of having to show those hands covers them with the deepest shame. They will turn their pockets inside out – Look, there is not much there. But the very fact of exposing their pockets – how humiliating! The Shah, when he left the palace, he was crying. At the airport he was crying again. Later he told in interviews how much money he had, and that it was less than people thought.”

One has to ask oneself: Why do those for whom the writing on the wall is intended end up being the only ones unable to read it?

Shaukat Aziz is now resting his feet in London, having set an all-time travel record that no future prime minister of Pakistan can hope to beat. He was out once a month, often to countries which had little to do with or for Pakistan. There really is very little need for our leaders to travel abroad unless it is business so urgent that it cannot be taken care of otherwise.

The president remained a distinct second to his hand-picked (or was it Paul Wolfowitz?) prime minister, travelling to country after country. How he missed Australia remains unexplained. Perhaps all will be revealed when he writes his second memoir that might be called Not in the Line of Fire or Hire. In the first couple of years of his rule, the president would travel by commercial flight. His party would include no more than a few members of his personal staff and a handful of officials.

He also initiated the commendable, though short-lived, practice of having media organisations pay for such of their representatives as they wished to travel with the president. I remember talking about it to his then — and now — press secretary Rashid Qureshi in New York and complimenting him on finally having discontinued a practice that was unfair to the taxpayer. Alas, no good thing lasts long, as no good deed goes unpunished, and it was no different this time around either.

The reversion to what had become standard practice began imperceptibly. What the Ministry of Information, which the nation hopes the incoming government will abolish once and for all, began to ship its favourite news people by putting cold cash in their hands and asking them to get to New York or Tokyo or wherever it was on their own. When droves of them began to appear in advance of or in the wake of the president’s arrival, it was hard not to stop and marvel at the new-found generosity of media owners and proprietors. But truth like murder has the unfortunate habit of coming out sooner than later. One slogan sums it all up: Long live Lifafa Journalism.

Before I move on from this particular skeleton in the government’s cupboard, I would like to add that the author of this brilliant scheme to rip off the taxpayer was Syed Anwar Mahmood, Sam to his fans.

The floodgates have remained open since. Not only did the size of the president’s entourage flourish like the Karachi Stock Exchange — and for the same reasons perhaps — but old Shortcut, not wishing to be seen settling for less, followed suit, only to excel his chief. There were so many foreign trips between the two of them that there were occasions when they are said to have run out of journalists to take. The size of the entourage also inflated like a balloon at a children’s party, with the difference that while balloons at children’s parties go pop, these ones, made of hardier material, continued to inflate. Between 2004 and 2005, between the two of them, they visited 46 countries.

The practice of taking large delegations at the taxpayer’s expense to other lands began with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He once said that he wanted to expose his ministers and others to the world beyond Pakistan’s borders so that they would learn. Of course, the only thing they learnt was how to do the maximum shopping in the minimum time. And who could blame them! After all, when you returned home on a VVIP flight, you sailed through customs without declaring what your bags contained.

Sometimes it also worked the other way. I know — and so must some others — of a minister in an earlier government who more than once employed VVIP flights to carry Gandhara pieces and other antiques abroad. There were officials at specific Pakistan missions who helped move the stuff. But that is a story from another day and should remain secure with other skeletons in the national cupboard, except that we are soon going to run out of cupboard space.

Gen Zia-ul Haq did away with everything that his predecessor had put into place, except foreign travel with large entourages. Of course, only Mansura-cleared types were considered worthy to be included in his delegations. Zia-ul Haq showed the world to thousands of the country’s religious zealots in the eleven years that he ruled Pakistan, disproving the old adage that travel broadens the mind. His favourite fundos remained as immune to enlightenment as they always had been, not that their mentor and great patron minded.

Benazir Bhutto — may she rest in peace — in her two stints in office was equally footloose and travelled the world’s capitals with large delegations. I once called her Sinbad Jahazan, but the sweet-tempered person she was, she never held that against me. Nawaz Sharif also travelled and with the same king-size delegations that his predecessors had standardised. Will those who are soon to be in office make a break from the past? We shall see, but if experience is any guide, then one can safely assume that the tradition of extravagant and unnecessary travel at state expense will continue.

Before I close this I would like to offer the Sinbad Jahazi Medal to our undertaker prime minister, otherwise Chairman of the Senate, Mohammadmian Soomro and Speaker of the defrocked National Assembly, the Chaudhry from Sialkot — imposed on the nation curtsey Chaudhry Anwar Aziz — for having beaten all records, past and present, and even perhaps records to be, in foreign travel. Soomro, instead of staying at home to see the elections through was out much of the time, something that any civilised, law-abiding society would consider dereliction of duty. I think it will be a conservative estimate were it to be said that Soomro came to the United States on one excuse or another at least six times a year. What he did or why he came, he will have to explain one day when the comrades are able to put together a people’s court. As for the Speaker, he was more out of the National Assembly than he was in there.

Pass me some Alka-Seltzer, Mickey old boy.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

In the summer of 1976, Qayyum Nazar arrived in London, keen to find out whether Noon Meem Rashed, who had died a year earlier, had been cremated at his own wish or if it was his Italian wife Sheila’s decision. He told me that Rashed’s cremation had shocked everyone in Pakistan and he wanted Rashed’s name to be honoured and a memorial raised in his memory at Government College, Lahore. But he wanted to know the truth first.

This conversation took place at the embassy where I then was. Qayyum Nazar wanted to ask Rashed’s son Sheheryar, who was in Brussels. I called Sheheryar and handed the phone to Qayyum. When he finally put it down, he looked crestfallen. “It was Rashed who wanted to be cremated,” he told me. “That was his will and his wish.” Sheheryar, who tragically died in the prime of his life of a heart attack, told Qayyum that his father had once witnessed a cremation and felt that fire alone could bring true extinction. He found purity and power in the act of cremation. His wife respected his wish. Qayyum returned to Lahore, carrying his unfulfilled dream with him.

The other day I picked up Rashed’s last collection, Gumaan ka Mumkin , published in October 1976 by Naya Idara, Lahore. The book, in Urdu type, like his three earlier collections that Munir Niazi pubished, carries a fascinating introduction by Ijaz Batalvi, whom Rashed assigned the task of publication. Those who have read what Ijaz wrote will have their memory refreshed; others who have not will gain a new perspective on Rashed’s state of mind in his last days.

Ijaz captioned his foreword, “Last collection, last meeting” (though the word mulaqaat is poorly rendered by “meeting.”) When Ijaz phoned Rashed from London, he insisted that Ijaz come to Cheltenham where Rashed and Sheila had settled down after Rashed’s retirement from the United Nations. I have heard it from those who knew that Rashed wanted to return to Lahore but Sheila wished otherwise. Rashed let her have her way, but his heart was in Lahore (which is what makes Lahore Lahore). Ijaz asked Rashed why he didn’t come to London instead. “I am an old man, you come,” he replied. He was only 64. Ijaz, being the persuasive man he was, talked Rashed into taking a coach to London, where he received him at Victoria. Rashed, Ijaz writes, was the last to get down from the coach. He said he had come just to meet Ijaz but, being in town, he might as well obtain a “ zindanama ” from the embassy, which was Rashed’s translation of “life certificate.” Since he received a small pension from the Pakistan government, he was obliged to obtain a certificate every now and then saying he was still alive.

After being officially declared alive, the two of them sat down in an Italian coffee house on Brampton Road for a chat. Rashed, Ijaz wrote, spoke of his “old age” several times, which made him quip, “But Rashed sahib, you are not old, neither in years nor in appearance. And the country where you live is such that you are not considered old unless you are at least 80.” Rashed replied, “You are right, but I am not an old man from here. The way I spent my childhood, what I heard about life and living from my elders, the ideas that formed the framework of my youth, my material and spiritual feed, are all quite different from what governs the life of those who belong to this place. How can I be an old man from here?” Ijaz asked how life was treating him in Cheltenham. Rashed replied that the place was full of retired old men, especially British military officers. “I run into them on my morning walk, touch my cap to them, and sometimes it comes to an exchange of ‘Good Mornings’ and even a brief conversation. Most of them talk about their time in India and the names of Patna, Poona and Peshawar come up as if they were the cities of the beloved. Many say that if they could, they would spend the rest of their lives out there. I listen to them and say to myself, ‘My dear friends, you are wrong, it is not Poona or Peshawar that you are nostalgic about; those cities are just an excuse to remember your youth and the streets where it was spent.’ ”

Ijaz and Rashed finally landed at Paddington where Rashed was to take a train for Cheltenham. Since it was leaving in an hour’s time, they sat down in a noisy station cafeteria to drink tea and talk. Rashed, who was carrying a large envelope, asked Ijaz if he would slip it into his briefcase and take it to Pakistan. Ijaz said of course he would, but he was curious to know what it contained. Rashed replied that it was the typed manuscript of a collection of his poems. He wanted Ijaz to take care of the book’s publication and the two went into great detail as to how the book should be set and what it should look like. Ijaz wanted Rashed to read a poem, which Rashed did after a good deal of reluctance. The lines he read close Hasan Koozagar , one of his most beautiful works. “Now that I read that poem and think of our last meeting, I begin to understand why he chose to read it to me. I also understand why he wanted the book to end on that poem,” Ijaz wrote. Rashed told his son after Ijaz had returned to Pakistan that he did not want to live beyond his time and he did not want to repeat himself. Ijaz arranged for the book’s publication in Lahore and at the precise moment he was handing over the manuscript to Salahuddin Mahmood, who had volunteered to oversee the publication, his phone rang. It was Radio Pakistan. “Rashed died in a London hospital last night,” the caller said.

It is only appropriate, therefore, to end this memory of these two remarkable men on a few lines from the poem that Rashed may have chosen as his epitaph. Jahanzad, I, Hasan the potter, have borne the pain of my message / from wilderness to wilderness / Thousands of years from now / how will they who pick up these shattered pieces of my work / how will they know / that with this base clay / I fashioned these pots / borrowing colour from your delicate body / transposing my pots into the realm of eternity / Through every pore of my body / I have absorbed in them the mystery of your nearness / as an offering to those who are to come / They may build on these shattered pieces that I leave them / But how will they ever count the drops of perspiration that went into their creation? / How will they touch the shadow of art’s birth /that joins era with era/autumn with autumn?

One of the great mysteries baffling America these days is: Where have the honey bees gone? And an equally baffling mystery has Pakistan in its grip. Where has the King’s party gone? In a few days, who knows, we may all be wondering: Where has the King gone? But that bridge need not be crossed yet, since it has not been reached.

According to those who know about bees and kings, the disappearance of the bees is called Colony Collapse Disorder. The disappearance of the King’s party can be termed Bulbous Baloon Deflation.

In America, the foundation of pollination services in agriculture, a tri-national coalition dedicated to promoting the health of all pollinators, is teaming up with a bee-friendly, natural personal care company called Burt’s Bees to address this agricultural and environmental disaster. Five teams of scientists are collectively researching issues surrounding honey bee health. The chief of Burt’s Bees says, “As a bee-friendly company, we know the critical role bees play in our ecosystem. We are proud to support this task force and believe these projects will take the appropriate steps to improve the quality and lives of bees.”

The mysterious disappearance of the King’s party on the night of Feb 18-19 has the nation in a tizzy. While the secretary general of the party, sometimes called the Laughing Buddha, has been sighted, the sprawling offices of the party on Islamabad’s Marghalla Road might be declared “evacuee property” by the Capital Development Authority.

The president of the party, wearing an extra dark pair of glasses, has been seen on at least one satellite channel but there are as many versions of what he said as there are people who watched him say it. One theory is that through a hard-to-explain process of osmosis, he was speaking in bee language.

Colony Collapse Disorder, scientists are beginning to think, not only applies to bees but to Pakistan also. The theory stands to reason, otherwise how does one explain the complete disappearance of the King’s party. The queen bee of the King’s party, who was all set to fly out and occupy the big hive in that house on the hill in that city which is a hundred thousand miles from Pakistan, though it can be found on its map, has not been seen since. Experienced bee spotters thought at one point that they had the queen bee’s trail but before they could say Charlie’s Aunt, the trail had gone cold. Search parties sent out to “Parha Likha Punjab” have returned empty-handed. There has just been no sign of the queen bee. When last seen, the queen bee was claiming in Maula Jat style that the Feb 18 elections had been rigged against the King’s party.

I compare this most distressing situation to what happened in 1969 when the old Field Marshal was sent home by YK-I I was in Lahore then, working for the Pakistan Times. The King’s party of the time, also called the Pakistan Muslim League, vanished from view overnight. Being the caring citizen I was, I wrote a column called PML Oh! PML, from which I seek the reader’s indulgence to reproduce a few excerpts.

So here goes: “Recently, some public-spirited citizens organised a search party for the purpose of verifying the present whereabouts of the Pakistan Muslim League. In the biggest operation of its kind, the searchers combed hills, valleys and plains for some trace of the party that was. They found nothing. It was like looking for El Dorado. There was absolutely no clue. The search party even went to Swat, only to come back a few days later with smuggled nylon socks and Japanese transistors, but no PML. The PML was the greatest party that ever was. During the great PML days, prosperity was so high that we did not know what to do with it. Consequently, it was decided to smuggle some of this excess prosperity to neighbouring countries. The press was so free that the Ministry of Information found itself out of work. To keep it busy, its officers were advised to learn figure skating during working hours. Radio and TV loved the government just as much as the press. Consequently, a rivalry grew between them for the fair hand of Islamabad. The incidence of crime was so low that the Police department sought the government’s permission to have some crime committed off and on. The government agreed in the public interest, otherwise it would have had to disband the department altogether. The intelligence services found that all their reports were becoming repetitive, as they were ending with the line: ‘The people love the PML government.’ Consequently, they got a standard report cyclostyled which was signed, dated and sent to the government with clockwork regularity.”

“On March 25, 1969, for reasons which the people to this day have not been able to understand, the PML government announced that it was going out of office. And while the whole nation is going berserk with worry as to the PML’s welfare and present whereabouts, I write these lines: ‘Dear PML, If you read this, please come back. No one will scold you. Even your little piggy bank of Rs. 3 crore (lots of loot in those days, believe me) is safe with the nation. You can come back and take it and with this money in your pocket you can buy as many lollypops as you like’.”

Moral of the story: The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Khalid Hasan is Daily Times’ US-based correspondent

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