Omar's orgasm

I have not spoken as an "authentic" Indian Muslim voice, but my post on Omar Abdullah has got a lot of people angry.

So I watched him on NDTV's Walk the Talk show last night.

He is speaking with a forked tongue. Did he not say something about his conscience post-Gujarat? Okay, here is is talking about how he admires Vajpayee...the same man who as prime minister did precious little and kept quiet and took up for Modi in Gujarat.

All these guys are now gushing about Omar's role in national politics. He is smiling like a cat that has licked all the cream and looks doodh ka dhula hua. Let him milk the issue dry.

Have fun. As he did in his "3-minute" orgasmic speech.
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Note: For those interested, a longish extract (an encounter with the poet Ahmed Faraz) from my book is in Dawn as well as uploaded on A Journey Interrupted blog.

Of sleeping dogs and Indian Muslims

This is a response to a gentleman's kind listing of Muslim ‘contribution’ to India I read about. Had he talked about some kinds of Muslims, one would have accepted it and let it pass. Now, since this is a general tarring of IMs, listen up…

His list:

1. Demolishing 2000 Hindu temples.

2. Aurangzeb

3. Jazia

4. Partition

5. Terroism

Then, rather sweetly, he asks, “Am I missing anything?”

It doesn't matter. You are missing the wood for the woodpecker. If you want to move on, then why keep pecking on the same old tree?

1. Yes, Hindu temples were demolished. How many Jain and Buddhist temples did the Hindus destroy? Oh, but that does not count, because Hindus consider Jains and Buddhists as their own.

2. Yes, you had Aurangzeb...and Akbar, Jehangir, Shahjehan...they performed a puja at the Taj Mahal recently, just because they felt like it. I mean, how many Muslims go to temples as tourists and fall on their feet to offer the namaaz because they were there and just felt like it? Oh, but Mussalmans are like the British, everything time-to-time, as we Gujjus say.

3. Yes, Jiziya...Mughals levied tax on Hindus. What can I do about that? It was wrong but they had come as conquerors and not democrats, na? And don’t you put money in McCain's and Obama's chanda boxes so that your future is safe in America and you can get that French kiss from the statue of liberty symbol?

4. Yes, Partition was a Muslim contribution. They made it easy for us to have another country to blame. India was made up of so many principalities with nabobs and maharajahs living in those palaces which had pink chandeliers and vomit-yellow carpets. The departing Muslims left you with these to get dollahs from tourists to peep through some stupid filigree.

5. Yes, terrorism...our ‘contribution’ is that we too sat and took it. Now, as one report says, car bombs have made their “debut”...so IMs were virgins until just the other day, right?

And then the gentleman says:

"We could have let sleeping dogs lie after partition. Wasn't that the point of partition?"

The Partition wasn't about letting sleeping dogs lie, get it? It was a response to the behaviour of Gandhi-Nehru-Jinnah separately and for different political reasons.

"Yet these bastards chose to keep on occupying our land, agitating for their own laws and rules, and explode bombs."

Your land? The Bay Area, SF? IMs are 'occupying' the land we were born in and tilled. Get that in your head. Now. Yes, some are agitating for separate personal laws because the politicians like playing ball with them and they like playing ball with the politicos. But, don't the Hindus have their own civil laws? The Parsis, the Christians? I am for a Uniform Civil Code, but it has to be based on secular ideas, not the idea of the majority community. No way. Yes, some Muslim organisations explode bombs. How many IMs support them?

"What the fukk do they want?"

That you learn to spell correctly without fear. After all, you have not studied in some madrassa where they shake their heads, right?

"For the flag of Islam to fly on Red Fort?"

No, I don't think IMs want the flag of Islam on the Red Fort; they are happy enough with Delhi Darbar and Karim's.

"Every few years we need a fucking pogrom just to keep them in line. Haraami kee aulad saaley, they wan't nothing in life but to die and kill."

I can feel your pain. And really sorry about all the trouble you guys have to undergo to organise those orgiastic pogroms, get saffron bandanas, and write all those slogans (hey, you did not take SRK to task for misusing your religion with ‘Om Shanti Om’? Isn’t he too a "haraamee ki aulaad"? Oh, I forgot, he pays lotsa jiziya to the IT department...)

"In any case, this is between Indian Hindus and Muslims who live in India. Its not really a Pakistani issue is it?"

Interestingly, now you are not blaming the Pakistanis. Why? One more Dunkin' Donuts trip being planned? Or that Sufi dance at the Daata Ganj Baksh in a ganja trance?

As Pooh would say, tell me how it was…

Now time for a siesta…yeah, let the sleeping bitch lie…

Just a note....

The article below was written before the bomb blasts of Bangalore and Ahmedabad. I have marked some portions in bold because this is going to be (already reports trickling in) precisely the 'defensive' and silly fallout from the Indian Muslims - yet again.

There has been an anonymous comment:

this is the price we are parying for keeping the muslims here after independence.Gandhi and Nehru are the biggest mass-murderes for letting the cancerous muslims stay on.

Has no Muslim died in any of the bomb blasts that have occurred in our country post-Independence? Has no Muslim been part of the struggle for Independence?

No one is "keeping" Muslims here. We were here, are here and shall remain here. Indian Muslims are not asking for a separate state quite unlike some other 'separatist' movements in India. So shut up.

More later. And there will be more later.

Chatterati and Chatterjee

Read this rather whatever-you-want-to-call-it piece by Pakistani writer Moni Mohsin. She was talking about how women are addressed in Pakistan (“Baby” and then “Baaji”, then “Begum sahiba” etc.) What intrigued me was her recollection of a recent trip to Jaipur and how she was feeling slightly bored as her Indian friend went through the sarees at a store. (Oh dear. Most Pakistani women love sarees, but I guess the trip here is something different.)

Now in her words:

“I continued to sip my Coke. He (the salesman) picked up a sari and thrust it in my face. Yeh pasand hai, memsaab? I looked over my shoulder. There was no white woman. He was speaking to me. Me? A memsaab? A memsaab in my mind is a white woman in a calf-length belted dress and a wide brimmed hat. She has firm opinions, a loud voice and belongs to the Raj novels of Paul Scott. I fail to qualify on all counts. Something about my demeanour or dress (a salwar kameez) may have signalled my foreignness to a particularly observant shopkeeper, but surely I didn’t look like a mem? But Indian friends informed me afterwards that the term was not meant personally. Memsaab in India is as generic as baji in Lahore. Indian ladies have also become memsaabs. Why it should be so remains a mystery, but so it is.”

Two observations from me:

* Terminology evolves over time. Men are routinely referred to as Saab, right? No problems with that? Such stereotypes really. So, how many women in Lahore are begums that they qualify as Begum sahibas? Does she turn around to look for some nawaabi thaat, a pankha, maybe a palanquin?

And why assume only white women have firm opinions and loud voices?

* Since when has the salwaar kameez come to signal foreignness for Indians? If she had looked beyond the straw of the Coke at the street, she might have watched women riding scooters wearing salwaar kameezes. Puhleeze. You want to sound exotic, try saying you were wearing a Lahori sombrero or something.

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Hmm:

"Aap ka kya pareshan hain?" (When he really wanted to know what the problem was.)

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, in his broken Hindi, to a disruptive member during the trust vote.

Different angles - 4

Zardari's security officer assassinated?

Khalid Shahanshah, the chief security officer of PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari, was assassinated on Tuesday afternoon outside his Clifton residence, police and witnesses said, according to Dawn newspaper.

How is the word assassination used here?

Here is what I read:

Assassination is the targeted killing of a high-profile person. An added distinction between assassination and other forms of killing is that the assassin (one who performs an assassination) usually has an ideological or political motivation, though many assassins (especially those not part of an organization) also demonstrate insanity. Other motivations may be money (contract killing), revenge, or a military operation.

The assassination euphemism targeted killing (or extrajudicial punishment / execution) is also used for the government-sanctioned killing of opponents. 'Assassination' itself, along with terms such as 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter', may in this context be considered a loaded term, as it implies an act in which the proponents of such killings may consider them justified or even necessary.

Does the newspaper have any information that will justify its use of the term? Why has it then not been explicated?

Its own report says a case has been registered against "unknown assailants".

Why do reports use words so loosely?

Ooh la-la-land of Omar Abdullah

So everyone is mighty impressed by the mighty heart of the cub of the cub of the Sher-e-Kashmir.

I am not biting this ‘dignified’ speech. Only because Omar Abdullah was not flashing a wad of notes does not mean one has to go along with his highly apologetic tone about how Muslims are not this and not that and then say, with some bloody audacity, that being Muslim and being Indian are not mutually exclusive. Why does he even need to say it? Why?

Here are some of his bon-bon mots, and let me respond:

“I am a Muslim and I am an Indian. And I see no distinction between the two. I don’t know why should I fear the nuclear deal. It is a deal between two countries which, I hope, will become two equals in the future. The enemies of Indian Muslims are not America or deals like these. The enemies are the same as the enemies of all those who are poor — poverty, hunger, lack of development and the absence of a voice.”

It isn't about you, Omar. It is about Indians. Not two abstractions called ‘countries’, please. If you personally do not fear the nuclear deal you can go and figure out some way to cook up something in your outhouse. Don’t mess with an issue that is larger and has greater ramifications. And stop this thing about India and America being equals in the future; this conveys that we are unequal at present and in view of the current deal sends out the message that India is therefore playing an inferior role. It is in fact doing so, which is what the ruckus has been all about. But Omar wants to be like America. And he is quoting the same thing about the real enemies being poverty and other stuff, which everyone knows. It does not mean there cannot be other enemies and America will ensure that India does not get too far. Look how it has got to Pakistan…

“Today, the Left is telling me that all secular parties should stand with the BJP to bring down this government. The same Left treated me like a political untouchable when I was with the NDA.”

You were a political untouchable because you were with the NDA. The Left is asking you to support the anti-nuclear stand, which happens to be the BJP’s purported stand. Understood?

“I am not a member of the UPA and don’t aspire to be one. I made a mistake to be with the NDA, especially after Gujarat riots happened. My conscience had asked me to quit NDA but I didn’t. My conscience has still not forgiven me.”

Go give a jadoo ki jhappi to your conscience and next time listen to it. Unless you don’t want to so that when the opportunity arises you can bring it out as a viable ‘dignified’ stand.

(On the Amarnath issue that Leader of Opposition L K Advani had highlighted in his speech yesterday, Abdullah said he had fought for the cause since it involved the land of his people. He dared the BJP to name a single leader from Jammu and Kashmir who had opposed the Amarnath yatra.)

“Until the day there is even a single Muslim in Kashmir, from Srinagar to Amarnath, the Amarnath yatra will not be allowed to stop.”

Taaliyaan.

Now takhliyaan...that is, over and out…

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For the other tamasha of ‘live’ bribery, you may want to watch this.