A wet towel by ... Roedad Khan
More like white flag. Some nuggets. Full of cliches and rabble rousing, paki style.
A carnival atop a volcano
Realism does not exist in Islamabad because life in Islamabad is itself a fiction.
Behind the constitution, there is an unwritten constitution which governs the state.
Prime Minister Gilani, known for his sartorial elegance, is obsessed by externals and is addicted to appearances with a passion for clothes, collar and cuff.
These are dangerous times in our country. These are also anti-elitist times. Angry mobs are howling for retribution. Pakistan is seething in ferment and in disarray. This is dangerous. Under an imbecile and feeble government, as we have today, there is but one step from discontent to revolution.
In Pakistan, as in geology, things can look perfectly stable on the surface - until the tectonic plates shift underneath. The straws in the wind are there.
Sixty-three years after independence, are we really free?
Today say "Pakistan" and what comes to mind – military coups, sham democracy, an accidental and powerful president, a non-sovereign rubber-stamp parliament, and a ceremonial prime minister. Today Pakistan is not just a "rentier state", not just a client state -- it is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a power-hungry junta and a puppet government set up by Washington.
If you want to see the chasm between the grotesquely rich and the abject poor, come to Pakistan.
Pakistan today is a land of opportunities for corrupt, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians holding fake degrees, dishonest civil servants, smugglers and tax-evaders who have bank accounts, luxurious villas, mansions and apartments in the west.
If you want to see how a free nation is stifled by authoritarian corrupt rulers through its own apathy and folly, visit Pakistan.
Today Pakistan – battered, its pride bruised – is a pretty pessimistic place. One by one, the lights are going out.
Tyranny is retreating everywhere except in Pakistan. The rule of law marching everywhere except in Pakistan.
Zardari is the fault line that has fractured our country.
The world failed to foresee the tidal pull of events in 1979 that swept away the Shah of Iran. The Iranian army, one of the best in the region, could not save him or itself from the wrath of the people. The world may soon see this historic event repeating itself in Pakistan.
Then Khan breaks out into sher-o-shayarie (poetry) just like many pakis do to express their deep down frustration levels. In case you are wondering, Roedad Khan is a retrired senior bureaucrat and a paki to the hilt.