The picnic, the beach and Nomy who almost drowned

NOTE: This post was originally posted on FAST NU-isance blog but seems like that blog for some godforsaken reason is moderated and in the last 15 hours none of the moderators felt necessary to come online. Way to go bungholes!

This piece is not to comment on how good or bad the picnic was. The fact that i left early is pretty much the reason I cant comment on that. But the news that Noman Bashir almost drowned at the picnic today didnt take much time to reach me and I guess almost all the other FASTians.

I didnt witness the event first hand so the rest of the post might not be totally correct. Then again its not much of an info but rather an opinion one.

Nomy with some friends had gone deep in the water after lunch. A big wave came and swept Nomy away. He remained calm (a part which he told me) but everyone else on the beach didnt have the same emotions. Now here is the thing which shocked me. The life guards saying that he has gone too far and we can do anything right now and the faculty telling everyone not to go after him and come out of the water. Good thing one of the lifeguards thought otherwise and went in to bring him back. Not only did he bring him back but thankfuly Noman was brought back without any serious issues. Hell, he didnt even require CPR, thats pretty tight for a guy who cant swim.

Now with the faculty you need to take into account that they were concerned with the security of other students. But to say no one is going to go after a life of a human being is pretty disturbing. Even more disturbing is the fact that the lifeguards said that they wont go after a person who everyone can see floating. The only job of a life guard is to make sure no one goes far enough to be in danger and if he does then try their best to bring him back, but apparently that is not how it works here.

Okay, Nomy is at fault by going so deep when he didnt know how to swim, but when he did actually get in danger he remained calm and maintained a positive state of mind. People make mistakes; they may be big or small but no one can say that they have had a flawless life. But to give up on a person who still has not drowned as yet is ridiculous. And no one other than a Pakistani can think of it like that. Hell people are saved from the sea even after they go underwater, this guy was floating!

All is well that end well. But we need to take into consideration they way people with authority handled the situation. “Hes too far, he cant be saved” and “no one goes after him” is too casual and lazy a statement when you are talking about a human life.

Quotes

I was chatting with my friend today and during our pointless talking about something fat being chutya he said that i should write a book on quotes. Now as stupid as it may sound I thought Ill put the "quote" which made him give that suggestion and maybe Ill get some comments on it. So here it goes

her motte cheez chutya nahin hotte

Translation
Every fat thing isnt a chutiya.

Cant exactly trasnlate chutiya but in short it means very very very VERY stupid.

Darkness be my Friend

Lately anyone who is a regular newspaper reader would have read news about “such and such area of Karachi without electricity”, “power breakdown continue for hours” etc etc. Today’s newspaper however, took the cake. The entire country - well atleast most of it - without electricity for almost half a day.

Sunday, September 25th witnessed a major power breakdown throughout the country. Due to some technical fault at Terbela and Mangla, power went down which started a chain reaction and made other generators trip due to increase in load, resulting in well what we saw yesterday. What exactly caused the failure at the central grid station isnt known as yet - atleast not to me - but from the news sources its an entierly techinical fault and has no sabotage attempt associated to it. Thanks God for that, last thing a country without power needs is a bomb as the cause of the breakdown.

Not to say that any of this was normal but guess it just didnt work for us. We needed more fuel to the fire and more gossip while we couldnt watch some senseless Indian or Indian inspired Pakistani soap. Hence the country wide rumors about the change in government. Since the President was in America and also went for a heart checkup yesterday everyone thought that it would be a good idea to have a new President.

All of the above is so depressing and absurd. Depressing since we had the entire country without power for a day. Good thing it was a Sunday and the factories and offices were off else things could have been worse. If nothing else we would have lost a day of production. Absurd since the nation on the whole is so bored and farigh. We need some conspiracy theory or the other to keep us going. These theories (and the pointless soaps) are the only source of entertainment for us all.

I will finish this off with a question. Why do we need so much drama?

The Spirit Carries On!

"DAWN, Sept 1: A shroud of mystery enveloped the manner in which the Dera Bugti administration on Friday allowed only a small number of mourners to quickly bury a wooden, padlocked coffin said to contain the body of Nawab Akbar Bugti in the ancestral town of the slain tribal chief once known as the ‘Tiger of Balochistan’. "

Why? Why this mystery? As I have written before I was with the "use of force" approach but no matter how corrupt the man was, everyone deserves a proper burial. However, this burial was far from proper. With all of the controversy going around about his death (killing or otherwise) the govt. should have handed over the body to the family. The way the body has been buried raises serious questions about the way Nawab Bugti died. This will and is creating another uprise in the oppostion and other Baluch nationlist groups. The govt. is as stupid as the rickshaw walla on the road. We (Pakistan) is on a one way train to disaster!

Bugti; Beyond the Realms of Death

Right now I am sitting infront of the TV, watching the press conference given by the military spokesperson. One criticism I have to him being on the media is that is that why so late? It was a military operation and the military should have been making the press statements and holding press conferences.

Anyways on to the press conferece!

First he talked about the violence and law and order situation of different parts of Baluchistan and pointed out the places where the law and order situation is normal at the moment. Things which the media either didn’t mention or don’t exsist, but I am pretty sure with the current media power of the country anyone would be lying about easily verifiable news.

He also went into the history and talked about the crimes committed by the Bugti forces and the BLA, things which I mentioned in my yesterdays post and which the opposition had apparently forgotten. Fuckers! trying to score points at such a critical time of Pakistan’s history. Come to think of it, they might be the ones adding oomph to the critical level. The least they can do is not predict another 1971 for gods sake. That’s demoralizing the entire nation.

Some media personals asked why media hadn’t been given access to the cave, to this he replied that its open for them but the military won’t be responsible for people who want to go in. The cave had land mines inside and in the surrounding areas, maybe the reason civilians don’t have access to the area is because the area isn’t obviously. Heavy machine can’t enter the area either! Apart from this I think that since its all mountainous area, Bugti militants might still be present in the area and pose threat to the Army or civilians in the area.

People have criticized that why wasn’t he arrested or captured. Lets look at the facts, the Pakistan Army lost a Colonel, two Majors and three Captains. People of this level don’t usually take the front lines of the battle rather they direct and execute the attack. The fact that they were in the lead (along with captured Bugti guides) does say that maybe they were going in to talk and maybe try and capture Akbar Bugti.

Our opposition parties should not take this moment to score points against the govt. and cause a national disorder. Their raw statements on the media can cause major outrage not only in the already angry Bugti supporters but also in the supporters of those particular opposition or nationalist party.

Bugti

Sunday 0130Hrs, I got an IM message from a friend of mine with the link to some Australian news source. The news said that security forces have killed the rebel tribal chief Akbar Bugti in NW Pakistan. As the night went on I got more details about the attack and the killing.

Following the death violence broke out in Baluchistan; the province Bugti belonged to and in other parts of country. Opposition parties and nationalist movements of the country condemned the Bugti killing. There were also some Baloch tribe leaders who supported the military action by the government.

Nawab Akbar Bugti was the Bugti tribe chief, he was waging a war against the state through his 250,000 men fighting force. Akbar Bugti was responsible for kidnapping and murder of foreign engineers and state representatives. His militants called the feraris blew up various gas pipelines and railway tracks in the country. He was doing this to get the Baluch people more rights and to get the government to start more development projects the Baluch area.

People are saying that military action is not the answer, that there were other ways to resolve the Baluchistan crisis. That is true, violence is not the answer. But when someone is repeatedly slapping your face you cant continue a logical discussion with him. You do resort to fighting back. If someone challenges the government the way Nawab Bugti did, if someone attacks the army, other government and foreign personals and civilian structure, is the government supposed to sit back and wait for him to cool down? The state can not tolerate people who break the law and challenge the writ of the government to this extent.

Even though Baluchistan is in a state of anarchy right now and nationalist parties are standing against the action of the government, Nawab Bugti had to be brought to justice. He talked of bringing his people prosperity but he had been and MNA and MPA and even CM Baluchistan. How much did he do for “his” people then? The Gawadar port and the Baluchistan coastal highway were steps by the government to a better Baluchistan. Was Bugti supporting these projects? No, he was busy kidnapping and murdering the foreigners setting up these projects!

A different view

A couple of days back I got to meet the young, inspiring “youth” of the country after a very long time. Though I myself am a part of the country’s youth but there was some age difference between the kids I met today and me. Even though they seemed to have a solid family background or at least some respectable financial standing they on the whole disappointed me. Some of these individuals had dreams and a plan to secure themselves a respectable future but they are totally void of the sense of belonging to their country. For them its like Pakistan doesn’t exist, or they have never even heard of the place. All they have to talk and say about our country is that “man this place is sitting in the past” and “urdu, it is where urdu comes in that everything sucks ass”.

Arite, guilty as charged; I am not that big an urdu fan nor do my latest plans include living in the country professionally (this ofcourse is not the final verdict and can and I am pretty sure will change over time) but the serious lack of belonging these kids showed today was to say the least, shocking.

Moving on from the patriotism speech it also seemed for some reason that these kids either never had any values taught to them or they forget them long time back and for them this word doesn’t even exist anymore. I mean they seemed so damn superficial. These burger kids have studied at the best of schools; at least the most expensive of them in the city, had respectable grades; meaning they aren’t brain dead or leaching of their parents money but that is where the so called “class” in them ends. They just didn’t seem like part of the Pakistani society; living in a world of their own, constructed by them to function the way the please and the rest of the 14 million population of the country equating crap. Not to say how over protected they all seemed. Classic hypocrites, have a tough ass act going on the outside but not even sure of how the transport system of the city works. No knowing it would come at a later stage, for them people who travel in those buses are not even people in the true sense (but this again points to the superficial part)

Looking at these kids and there enormous superficial nature I got to see myself in a different light, the light in which I suppose my parents might have been seeing me for the past few months. I saw a part of them residing in me. I saw myself as a burgurish superficial asshole who has only himself to think of and for whom the rest of the world means crap. The truth is that I was never bought up this way, these were not the values my parents taught me and this is not the person I am. Its correct that this country has shown lots of injustices to me but at the end of the day they are nothing compared to how millions of others have to live their lives. It is correct that we don’t have a system but then if everyone with a bit of talent is going to run away who the fuck is going to build a system to begin with. I still don’t know if I plan to stay in Pakistan, but I do know one thing; this is my country, this is where I belong, it has given a lot to me and just cause a few people are only interested in looting and plundering it doesn’t mean I have to abandon it. If the only people left will the leeches who is going to pump new blood in the system?

Now just cause I met a few kids who displayed that kind of behavior doesn’t mean I base the entire generation thinking on them, but the sad part is that they are the kids from the educated families, from family with position in the society, kids who get the opportunity to voice their opinions. But if this is the voice that will be expressing the opinion of an entire generation then we might as well not have a voice at all!