Beep-beep. Early morning. Text message from a friend in Karachi. So, bleary-eyed, I read that “My party has won. It is 5 am here and I am going to sleep!" Big smile. But before that there was a swipe about the fate of Musharraf — he knows I do not dislike the former president, which is of course putting it subtly.
Since Pakistan broke my sleep, I jotted down a few quick thoughts on the election results:
1. For all talk of democracy, it boiled down to the Punjabi, Sindhi, Mohajir, Pathan votes, and Balochi, Ahmadi non-votes.
2. There is always talk about a sympathy wave. If that were the case then the ANP that lost quite a few members to murderous devils would not have been routed.
3. Imran Khan is now a leader, so it's time he behaved like one. And not a tribal chief, even though Khyber Pakhtunkwa gave his party the votes.
4. I can already see the gleam in a certain Indian anchor's eyes as his voice quivers while screaming, "The nation wants to know if Nawaz Sharif will take action against Pervez Musharraf for crossing over to Kargil during the war"!
5. Nawaz Sharif has inherited a huge problem - his brother, Shahbaz.
6. Asif Ali Zardari has too many opponents within the PPP, including his son Bilawal. One of them will grow up.
7. Pakistan will continue to be important to the United States, China, Afghanistan and India for the same reasons as it has been for many years.
8. Imran Khan's slogan of 'Naya Pakistan' was the most potent one. Good varnish job, as happens in almost every country.
Let me end with an appropriate couplet by Faiz Ahmed Faiz:
"har chaaraagar ko chaaraagari se gurez tha varna humein jo dukh the bahut laa-davaa na the"
(The healer avoided healing, but my troubles were incurable anyway)
I hate missiles.
They are inhuman. But, of course, you might say, that is the idea. I hate
missiles because I like a fair fight, if at all. Firing missiles with a push of
a button is not fair. Don’t give me examples of other countries and how all is
fair in love and war. It is not.
Yet, we in India
have been jubilant over the Agni-V ballistic missile that took off from Wheeler
Island off the Odisha coast on Thursday.
I tried to get
excited as I saw a few clippings on television and then some photographs.
In repose
it looks like a giant-sized pencil. It reminded me of a fairytale where a young
character stares wide-eyed at this marvel and tries to grasp it in her hand and
she just cannot. And then with a great rumbling sound it moves on its own and
whooshes off into the sky, writing out something on the clouds in red letters.
The girl cannot read it clearly and the pencil is gone. She cries. For some
reason I think of the character as a girl. Maybe, I am rewinding to my own childhood.
Missiles are an
adult childhood game. I want to applaud this longest range ballistic missile with
a range of over 5,000 kms. I want to start clapping when I read newspaper reports
that call it “a high five moment”, “a game changer”. I want to make angry faces
at the US for lecturing us to “exercise restraint” and to Chine for calling it
a “political missile”. We are just playing. So what if it can reach most parts
of China. I can reach China too.
I still see that
little girl and a colour pencil. But now I look closely and it has ‘Bharat’
written on it, and then it pierces the clouds and withstands heat of 3000
degrees Celsius. I had no idea heat could ever get that hot. I do not know many
things. I am sweating in 35 degrees C. This must be one swell of a missile. It
has the right name. Agni – fire.
We are now part
of the elite club of nations with Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM)
technology like U.S., Russia, France and China. I read that, “India's policy of
no-first-use of nuclear weapons, Agni-V will provide the country with depth in
deterrence.”
This makes me
feel good. The missile can reach very far, can destroy, but unless somebody
else uses it first we will not do anything. I don’t know much, but I only hope
it does not start to rust, or its parts do not get consumed with all the wiring
inside. If it can withstand so much heat, then it must be careful not to burn
itself. It happens with so many things in life.
I know you will
tell me to shut up and stop this fairytale. You will quote some scientist who
said, “Today, we have made history. We are a major missile power.”
Okay. I want to
be part of history, of an elite club. I also want every little girl and boy to
get a colour pencil just like Agni-V to act as deterrence against hunger, and
to bring some cheer in their lives.
Donald Trump loves America so much that he wants Libya. And China too if he could get past the noodles and fake Rolexes. There was a time when many wanted Donald Trump. Today, in his respectable avatar as a “serious” Republican candidate, he is making rather outrageous comments. No, I don’t have a problem when he says, “this country is a laughing stock throughout the world”, for he assumes that the United States has got the power and ought to use it not to better itself but to get the better of others.
It is his rather facile attitude that makes one wonder what all the fuss is about Sarah Palin.
On Libya
“Look at Libya. Look at this mess. We go in, we don't go in, he shouldn't be removed, we don't want to remove him, we don't want to touch him, but he should be removed. Nobody knows what they're doing on Kadhafi. I'd do one thing. Either I'd go in and take the oil or I don't go in at all. In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation is yours."
I am tempted to at least accept his upfront stance. Nobody asked the American administration to go to Libya in the first place. If anyone has to do anything to or with Col. Muammar Gaddafi it is the other political leaders and how the people decide to act. He is pummelling them, but the situation would have been not as bad without outside interference.
Trump has inadvertently revealed that it is all about oil and not to save the poor citizens. Talking about the old days, he need not go very far back in time to figure out that the US went to war with countries it had no skirmishes with. It just landed up there when two other countries or two factions within a country were fighting, or of course to look for weapons of mass destruction or to find a man in a cave or a caveman. None of these qualify as victories because the local people have been most affected. And none of these nations belongs to America even after the ‘win’.
On China
“If you look at what China is doing, they're stealing our jobs, they're taking our money. They're then loaning our money back. It's amazing. They're making all of our products. They are also manipulating the currency that makes it almost impossible for our companies to compete with China.”
China is, undoubtedly, a canny competitor. But the jobs have not been stolen. It was the US that decided to outsource jobs to get cheap labour. If China is manipulating currency and doing a trade yo-yo, then it is merely using sharp business tactics. The US economy has suffered due to the jugglery of its own companies and the policies of the government. Naturally, foreign investors will move to where they get returns. China is not taking American money, unless Americans are choosing to invest there.
And what American products are being made by China? They manufacture cheap stuff of their own or imitations of Swiss watches, German gadgets, Italian mosaic work and even Indian artefacts. Ever heard about Chinese American apple pie? Or Apple?
- - -
Another case of putting the carriage under the horse is Indian PM, Manmohan Singh.
On five things he’d like to achieve with relations to Pakistan:
“Five would be too much. Well, if I can succeed in normalizing relations between India and Pakistan, as they should prevail between two normal states, I will consider my job well done.”
He cannot mention five things and then he wants normalcy. What is normal about these two countries individually, anyway? How would he define it when there are separatist movements all around? What is the yardstick for normal states to be considered normal vis-à-vis each other?
Such obfuscation is not new, but it would have been way better had he mentioned five specific things, even if he said cricket or sweets or films or exchange of camels, because he would certainly not talk about defence issues, Jammu and Kashmir, nuclearisation, prisoners, infiltration, Headley, Rana, Kasab, Raw, ISI. Nope.
So, how do we achieve this normal state between two normal states when the real issues are not addressed? I understand that on a flight to Kazakhstan, where the query was posed, it might not be prudent to go into details, but we have been in denial or employ dithering tactics.
And dear Mr. Prime Minister, this is about India and not you and how “well done” your job is. Is it at stake or is it steak?
Now when you see a Chinese face, think of your great-great-great-ad nauseum grandparents. The hakka noodles could well be Indian.
This is revealed by a study ‘Mapping Human Genetic History in Asia’ which concurs that the human population originally came from Africa. It disproves something based on fossil data. It seems like a nice thing to do given that we have people willing to play fossils.
A hundred thousand years ago the humans in Africa figured out they had to look around a bit. They were focussed on this country, like the world’s eyes are on India stuff going on now. I can imagine them saying that they were moving because of the fertile soil, the amazing culture, the opportunities, and the natural beauty. The canny ones might have even thought this was reincarnation the moment they spotted some thick foliage just like back home.
Then, due to some genetic jugglery they began to show differences. Probably the umbilical cord was being cut off by twisting and turning. They started pronouncing R as L and used sticks to eat. In one of the first uprisings that possibly took place in unrecorded history, they decided to leave. They had to walk for days in the sun, which perhaps lends them the marked features of rather small eyes slanted to avoid the glare. All races have some distinguishing physical aspects. Such as Indians nodding their heads by tilting them towards left shoulder and then the right one at a 30 degree angle to convey yes, no, whatever.
To return to the early departing population, they settled in what came to be East Asian countries. What I cannot figure out from this study is how these nations were already there as prêt-a-porter countries. Were they called China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines? Why did the first group go to Thailand? Was the place tough on them and is that why they mastered the art of massage? Does the thriving business in Bangkok having anything to do with the lessons from the Kama Sutra they imbibed? And why did the second lot move to Malaysia? Are today’s Pakistanis following Malaysian Islam rather than the Saudi one they are accused of?
Why do Singaporeans have strict penal charges against spitting on the roads? Are they trying to get rid of their Indian roots of spitting any and everywhere? Is the Japanese penchant for making small things and being minimalist a dissenting response to the ostentation of Indian ethos?
These are not questions that engage the 90 scientists who took a sample of 1,928 unrelated individuals from 73 populations in 10 countries. They are more concerned about how this research “is also significant for understanding migratory pattern of human history and furthering the research in medicine. It has great potential for collaboration with these countries in finding treatment to many diseases like flu, AIDS and other pandemics”.
So, if you have a bit of fever and are coughing madly, don’t just gulp down that sweet syrup and suck on lozenges. Think of how the Japs would do it. I assume the fact that they bow on any given occasion is a halfway touching of the feet gesture by the majority population of India; it also probably derives from how they coped with clearing their lungs. You know, bend a little and the kho-kho-kho subsides.
All your ailments will now be seen in the light of how they are faring. If you are about to faint, then make sure to ask them to pass some smelling ajinomoto, please.
- - -
An Indian has been chosen as one of the top ten foreign heroes in the past 100 years for contribution to China. This report came in before the research was made public.
Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis treated Chinese soldiers during the Sino-Japanese war of 1938. Mao Zedong was mighty impressed and when the doctor died, he said, “The army has lost a helping hand, the nation a friend. Let’s always bear in mind his internationalist spirit.”
How internationalist China is we all know, especially during those days, but he probably felt some tug of a common heritage. I think these researchers must be right.
Incidentally, Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani was a film based on the life story of the doc. I am not sure how much of it was true, but in the celluloid version he cured the plague, was captured by the Japanese, fell in love with a Chinese girl and died, because of the plague not the girl. V Shantaram enacted the title role and Jayshree played the Chinese girl. All same-same, no?
Why was such a noise made about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh?
He is in exile. But from his utterances it does not appear so. He first fled to Tawang from Tibet in 1959; his attachment to the place is understandable. However, he ought to understand that he should not speak about Indian politics:
“My stand that Tawang is an integral part of India has not changed.”
The report has called it his defence of the host country. In all likelihood this will work as mocking China, not because of the Tibetan issue but the Maoist one. It probably suits the central government’s purpose.
His statement:
“It’s usual for China to oppose my visit. It’s baseless to say my trip is anti-China. My visit is not political at all”
reeks of politics. Right from the start a statement is being made.
Even more surprising is his stand on Tibetans in India:
“The other reason why I am happy is that the people here take genuine interest in Tibetan Buddhism and Buddhist culture. Right from Ladakh to Tawang, Tibetan Buddhism is practised traditionally.”
Buddhism, yes. But Tibetan Buddhism? The Dalai Lama was given a place to set up home with his followers; it is only natural that they will go out for work opportunities. Hasn’t it struck anyone as rather naïve of us to let the Tibetan version spread?
The Tibetan right to a homeland is valid, but the Dalai Lama’s idea of being a travelling salesman to “promote human values, and promote harmony” needs a rain check.
