Napoleon’s disease and a collegemate

It seems that the Jail Bharo Tehrik was not as serious as the 2014 dharna. That was ended with the APS Peshawar massacre, the Jail Bharo Tehrik was ended aft6er the Supreme Court verdict stating the obvious: when an assembly is dissolved, elections must follow in 90 days.

It is true that the dharna had run out of steam when it was called off, and Imran Khan was casting about for excuses to bring it to an end. But it had not become a joke, which the Jail Bharo Tehrik had been, from the get-go. Once again, Imran proved right. I mean, he didn’t present himself for arrest, and there were some mean-spirited people who wanted to know why he was so anxious to get people arrested when he was not willing to get arrested himself.

I wonder now how those arrested on the first day are doing. In particular, I wonder how Makhdoom Shah Mahmud Qureshi is holding up. It took the Jail Bharto Tehrik for it to be disclosed in court that he suffers from piles.

That put me in mind of a nickname that was inflicted on a fellow who was a year senior to me in college, Maulvi Bawaseer. He was thus ennobled because a) he had a beard and b) because he had once in an unguarded moment admitted to some classmates that he was a martyr to them. What is one supposed to call, Qureshi, Makhdoom Bawaseer? I don’t quite see why, but I was irresistibly reminded of the advertisements that were daubed on so many walls, all over the city, and on roads outside it, for a remedy for ‘Khooni Bawaseer’. The remedy was not mentioned in words as prominently as the disease. I presume Makhdoom Sahib has avoided that particular complication.

However, he should not be ashamed of the disease, for one of his fellow sufferers was Napoleon. He wasn’t a very healthy man, for he also had a bad gastric ulcer. Do you remember his most famous pose? With one hand in his coat? Well, that was because he used to get some relief by pressing bon the painful spot. Ask a doctor, and he will tell you that you have to be pretty bad for pressing it to give your relief. Well, at least no one has claimed an ulcer as grounds for bail.

Perhaps the PTI should revise its attitudes towards bails. For a start, mo one dresses for the part. No yellow qameezes with blue polka dots, no colourful dhotis, no pumps without benefit of socks, no fright wigs, no warts on the cheek. How do they expect to get bail if they don’t look the part?

Of course, it’s all political persecution. Like is happening in India, where the Delhi Deputy CM, a stalwarts of the Aam Admi Party, has been nabbed for corruption. Even though the AAP, like the PTI, had campaigned to get rid of corruption. The BJP is bent on making up charges, just like the ones bout the Toshakhana watches.

The government is focusing on non-issues, instead of dealing with real issues, like the Barkhan IED blast, which probably got something to do with the private prison of Abdur Rehman Khetran. Though I would be very surprised if the struggle for the Sardar-ship of the tribe, did not figure, if only as a motive for the last murder which revealed through autopsy, where the body was not that of Khan Muhammad Marri’s wife, but of a young woman criminally assaulted, who was shot dead, and over whose face acid was poured. Sounds like someone didn’t want to get caught.

Sounds like the same motive was at work in the butchering of Kong Kong socialite Abby Choi, whose body parts were found in a fridge, and whose head, torso and hands are still missing. Among the suspects is her former father-in-law, an ex-cop. I think that makes sense, because an ex-cop would want the corpse dismembered and never found. You get off when the prosecution can’t prove anybody dies.

 

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