Some excerpts from my readings of the Paki. papers.
First off, as you probably know TFT is now a paid sub. so thats kind of gone, which is a shame.
Angela Williams writes (albeit hardly originally) about why lahore, and really why pakistan is still such a great place to live - this follows up from a column about two weeks or so ago where she was propounding a similar thesis, but that experiment was marred a bit when she started discussing--somewhat inexplicably--the market for thongs amoung pre-pebuecents in the UK.
She still has, i feel more cojones than most writers, in that she is willing to look at the situation objectively, and make a distinction-while most other writers will either widely condemn (as seems to be the fashion amongst the english press), or again, equally liberally paint a picture of a moralist's disneyland.
In front of a state-of-the-art glass office building one comes across a family huddled over a fire, cooking their humble meal, as their shoeless children and nappy-less baby play with twigs and soil. One sees a six-year-old girl crossing the busy road, balancing a one-year-old sibling on her hip as a camel may wander by. Shocking, weird, astonishing. Lahore!
Is how it starts, and if you can read the rest
here.
And then the great Ayaz Amir disappoints abit; hes currently in Bangkok, and describes in some detail the laid-back, and generally relaxed atmosphere that the Thais seem to have. And the undercurrent of the issue of morality still seems to be bothering him, something that started off with his surprising admission for partiality to the 'golden stuff'.
These fall under the rubric of dishonourable conduct. No guilt is attached to personal preferences in the moral field. Personal morality is just that, your business, not anyone else's. It certainly is no business of the state.
He raises an interesting point, on our hurry to get everywhere, which seems to be at loggerheads with our chronic lack of acitivies to indulge in. Anybody who has ever been at a scene of a public gathering in karachi would know what i am talking about- really, if anybody has nothing to do with their time, it has to be us.. Crowds with gather, at the most everyday of happenings, making sure that an ring of useless, and generally clueless men ensure not even the remotest possiblities of anything productive happening at the scene remain.
If you really want to see Ayaz at his best- i would suggest a slightly earlier column
here [Injury, fine, but why the insult?].
This weeks column is
here
Finally, i just had to chuck this in. For all of you that doubt your abilities with the pen, you might want to read this
chappie. Surely, if anything so devoid of depth can get printed, anything can..