Now that you’ve read most of this month’s magazine and ended up at the back pages, I hope you have enjoyed yourself. Pique is a relevant and vibrant magazine, its editors are very courteous and diligent, they employ handsome freelance writers and unlike every publication currently existing in Pakistan, they pay people on time.
But that doesn’t mean that they are without their issues. For example, this month I was approached to write a satirical piece on the current political situation.
Seriously? How exactly is anyone going to be able to improve upon the surreal, barely plausible irony of everything that has already unfolded before us so far?
Lets begin with the current heart of the politico-entertainment industry — Islamabad. This month, the capital came to a standstill because of a peaceful revolution on its main avenue. The proponents held up the constitution, their opponents called them unconstitutional.
For one week, we were promised blood on the dancefloors and on the streets. For one week, Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri compared the government to stubborn donkeys and lazy elephants, and for one week, the government shot back by mostly making cheap remarks about his headgear and whether the good Doctor had a backup plan in case someone farted inside his impenetrable container. For one week, Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri gave more deadlines than the number of bored housewives in DHA starting their own clothing lines, and for one week, the government tried to paint themselves as victims who deserved as much pity as a dental hygiene salesman in Britain.
And what happened in the end?
The two forces joined hands, forces and questionable sartorial choices and promised to make true fraandship, exchanged wifi passwords and removed each other from the limited list on their Facebook accounts.
How exactly can anyone deliver a punchline more ironic, more destructive, more so-unbelievable-I-can’t-believe-I-hadn’t-expected-it-before?
Staying in Islamabad, we also have the fiefdom of the eponymous subject of the Sajjad Ali superhit song, Chief Saab. Chief Saab has seldom listened to the advice in the song’s lyrics “Buss bhai buss zyada baat nahi Chief Saab” and preferred instead to play out his reign as an elaborate experiment in avant-garde postmodernism, combining both high concepts like investigating missing persons and government kickbacks with popular, low art subjects like how many wine bottles Atiqa Odho drank this week.
Stung by the slowdance of the government and Dr Qadri, who were locked in the sort of incestuous, sleazy titillating embrace we have come to expect from Ishq-e-Mamnoon, the judiciary decided it was time for some action.
Right in the middle of the long march shenanigans, the Chief Justice of Pakistan decided to arrest Raja Rental aka the Prime Minister of Pakistan. According to the CJ’s twitter account, the decision was made partly to prevent massive corruption, partly for sh*ts and giggles. Amongst all the confusion this caused, it also led to some classic memes, my personal favourite being a picture of the CJ with the caption “Bhai ki timing check ker, buss…”
And if these things weren’t enough to make you laugh, Pakistan still had a few other jokes to offer. Take the Shias first. After yet another gruesome attack on Hazara Shias in Balochistan, Shia groups and others began spontaneous demonstrations across the country. Yet after four days of protesting with the corpses of their loved ones on the streets, all they got was the privilege of being lumped together with other issues as symptoms of Pakistan’s impending collapse, the punchline being of course that the murderers were more likely to become coalition partners than prosecution targets.
And if that wasn’t funny enough, there were those tribesmen who also refused to bury their dead — people who had been allegedly killed by the army. In a truly hilarious move, not only did they fail to make the headlines, they were beaten up and sent home packing by — wait for it — more security forces.
I’m already running out of space and I haven’t even mentioned the TV anchors and the Lines of Control and the price of a roti and the length of a CNG waiting line and the new Co-ven video and the number of lives being saved by the Youtube ban. And oh yes, there hasn’t been a single reference to Rehman Malik either, the knight in shining armour for every beleaguered writer searching for a cheap joke to end a piece with.
So no, kind editors of Pique magazine, I will not be writing any satire and I won’t be making any jokes this month. I think we’ve had just about enough of those.
The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad.
