planet of the grapes!!!

“ kaali kaali bakreean, oon hai kya?”

well the translator/lyricist/rip-off-artist puts it as

“jee haan, jee haan, teen thaileean.”

the more likely riposte from any self respecting black sheep, however, would be,
‘uloo ke pathay, “sheep” ko kehtay hain “dumba”.’

the point being that where there’s a smart aleck who thinks he did a good job translating something, there is a pile of figurative bullshit. which is why most pakistanis wish veena malik would stick to urdu or punjabi.

i can’t see any logical connection here (but then who ever comes to this blog for logic?) but this brings us to the question that everyone is asking. and no, i’m not referring to the date of the next victoria’s secret fashion show. no i’m talking about where osama is. yes, osama bin laden. the guy who made bush the most famous non-human primate on the face of the earth. contrary to popular belief, osama is not in in a cave or tunnel in north waziristan. no sir, no way. he’s much more comfortably shacked up in banaras colony, karachi, and operating under the guise of a pathan rickshaw driver with the words da bajaur gulona (flower of bajaur) painted in a merry cherry red on the back of his vehicle. and no, his insurance policy against arrest is not a suicide jacket. its a quaint pukhtoon custom called pannah warkawel (offering asylum), which is an integral part of the sacred honour code known as pashtunwali.

the pashtun race is supposedly the world’s biggest segementary lineage ethnic group. it is definitely the largest ethnic group in the pakistani transportation business. a distant second is the donkey. though both of them share the top slot in the “stubborn” department. it has been said that when one pathan says to another, “quit being an ass”, any donkey within earshot will be seen to be grinning from ear to ear. its like an honour for them. but i digress. pashtunwali, to put in a nutshell, is the collective expectation for behaviour, conduct and attitude that any one pathan or a whole group have for one another. as such it is sacrosanct and even though you saw the traitor in the rambo movie you have to understand that no pathan will ever hand over someone seeking asylum. and asylum has been sought. so osama is here to stay. had he been from anywhere else, the spy sattelites would easily have caught him taking a leak benind a bunker facing a wall on which was transcribed “yeh kutta paishab kar raha hai” but fate has determined that an arab terrorist can easily pass for a pathan fruit vendor and vice versa and bin laden is no exception. so when you’re zooming down from that high above, it’s not that easy to differentiate between aimen al zawahiri and gulsher khan achakzai.

and its not just the visuals either. arabs and pathans are similar on so many different levels its actually unnerving. they both talk in harsh guttural tones which to speakers of the more naturally melodic urdu sound awfully like someone clearing their throat. they both favour headgear, suppress women and rarely need spectacles. they even share the same basic credo in life, translated so aptly by burton in the thousand nights and a night as, “women for breeding, boys for pleasure and melons for sheer delight”. now imagine osama sitting in a seedy cinema hall in orangi town watching a mussarat shaheen/badar muneer oldie and it will click. there’s the woman for breeding (sort of), the boy for pleasure (if you conede that any beardless male is a boy), and a pair of melons jiggling obscenely despite all the posturing of the censor board. ab aur kia chahiye is se behtar? waves. naam hi kaafi hai.

so if bush’s dear condi is reading this, please please stop trying to find the man. he’ll die of natural causes before you do anyway. concentrate on trying to find weapons of mass destruction in mongolia. i hear they’re planning an attack on israel in the not too distant future. something about recovering tel aviv for its rightful owners…

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note to self: do not drink grape juice on an empty stomach. it does not do your mind any good.