Disclaimer: For those whose minds are spinning with PPP and PML (N) poppycock and their eardrums crackling with Yin and Yang yammer, caution is suggested. While listening to the yelling on airwaves can damage your hearing, the following can raise your blood pressure and quicken your pulse for reasons you yourself know best.
You know when Yin and Yang yammer, the ‘Pindora’ (as declared by Minister Babar Awan) Box opens up. Wo jo hai Mr TV Analyst; Bayra-gharak aur Satya-naas Khan; PPP ka Sultan Rahi Taseer; Sheeda Tulli of doom and gloom; Ms Qurbani Wahab; Mrs Jamhooriat Raja and Allahke-fazlo-karam se Mian Sahib give us their Oscar performances. With this Academy-Award cast of characters, who would want to waste time watching Slumdog Millionaire. Pakistanis are blessed with their own scumdog shows each night. Every show is a stellar. Come eight o’clock and the yammer begins. The yelling and screaming doesn’t end until midnight.
Yin and Yang even haunt our dreams. I have to take sleeping pills to forget their jowls and howls. Having taken over our waking hours, Pakistanis have politics coming out of their noses. Listen, you don’t need a translator to parse this Chinese Yin-Yang tongue-twister. Just get your basics right. Yin and Yang are two opposites of the same force. They are bound together, intertwined, and interdependent. These antagonist opposites are sustaining the entertainment-starved public today and keeping us away from agonising over real-time issues like poverty, terror, corruption, illiteracy, overpopulation, no jobs, no merit. Who wants to listen to development ‘drivel’ when we have Sean Connerys and Pamela Andersons (I exaggerate) slugging it out with each other on the squawk box?
Yin is the PPP. Yang is the PML-N. They hate each other’s puffy faces with chests pulled out for a boxing match. The camp followers from the feuding political parties are happily snitching each other’s best kept secrets. Guess who the taker is? It’s the foreign press stupid! Newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal end up with washing Pakistani leaders’ dirty linen in the world. It’s brought to them by squealers from Yin and Yang scavengers rummaging through their party’s rubbish dumps stinking with dirty deals of their leaders’ unsavoury actions. The presidential truth-seer and spin doctor Farhatullah Babar has to defend big boss; while that boot-polish black beard Siddique-ul-Farooq has to play the victim on Sharifs’ behalf.
“Forgive, but do not forget the past, arrange for the present, and face the future” is the latest presidential mantra, we’re told by spokesman Babar.
When Allahke-fazlo-karam se Nawaz (and bro Shahbaz) were again pronounced felons by the Supreme Court, it became high noon at Islamabad. Protestors came out beating their breasts and burning PPP flags and larger-than-life hoardings of Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto that dot the capital since February 16 last year. These portraits had become a part of our landscape and we the citizens had sheepishly accepted them as permanent fixtures in our universe. But now that the Sharifs’ have turned their guns on Zardari, we the TV viewers are assured ringside seats for many boxing matches scheduled between the two heavyweights in the weeks ahead. Remind me again, which wiseacre said that the political tide will turn in March? Was it a senior Urdu columnist who made these ‘far-fetched’ remarks on, yes, you guessed it, on TV! Flush with excitement after a two-hour session with COAS General Kayani in early January, Mr Irshad Haqqani winged his way to the nearest TV channel to tell the world what he was told. The next day all the channels and newspapers were on fire with his revelation.
Ah! The yammer is the message.
In more recent times, within minutes of the Sharifs’ disqualification, a private TV channel rolled out the first bout between Yin and Yang. Khawaja Yang Asif battled Fauzia Yin Wahab. The lady had smoke coming out of her ears and fire from her eyeballs. Moving in for the kill, she plastered the Yang with irrefutable allegations. The verbal joust did produce jocund moments like when Ms Wahab frequently turned her face away to put her hand on her mouth. She was probably stifling her laughter. I think we were taken for a Punch and Judy show - that puppet show where a comical little hunchbacked Punch, with a large nose, engages in altercation with his wife Judy. Except Asif is not hunchbacked nor is Fauzia his wife!
In case you worry that Pakistanis are getting addicted to such surreal stuff. Worry not! I’ve news for you. Since the whole world is financially bankrupt, its populations have turned to TV viewing. Darn, it’s free! An average American spends 5 hours watching TV daily. I wonder how many saw the keeper of Japan’s finances drunk. He slurred like crazy. His performance in Rome was shown over and over again. The moral: don’t get that drunk that you become incoherent. Nakagawa denied being drunk and said he had mixed cold medicine with alcohol. “My conduct at the press conference was the result of medicine and some wine. I apologize for it,” he said in issuing a public apology. Back in Tokyo, Nakagawa resigned saying that he was taking “responsibility for the trouble I caused.”
Unlike Pakistani leaders, Japanese leaders have the courage to admit their ‘crime.’
Jade Goody is dying of cervical cancer. The world will see her die. And for these rare shots, Goody has been paid millions. Her sponsors-of-death can’t wait for the big moment. (She may be dead by the time you read this.) The 27-year-old reality TV star earned $2 million dollars last Sunday by selling her wedding video to Living TV cable and satellite channel in UK. Jade Goody rose to fame for her racial slurs against Shilpa Shetty on the show ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ calling the Indian star ‘Shilpa Poppadom (as in pappar in desi lingo). Last year she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The mother -of-two plans to hold a christening ceremony for her sons Bobby, 5 and Freddie, 4 before she dies. OK Magazine has already paid her in advance for exclusive media rights. Goody who is getting morphine injections every four hours has the media on tenterhooks. Will she or won’t she be alive to watch her wedding movie scheduled to be aired on March 11 and 12. The TV channel is expecting to attract the highest ever ratings! She wants to leave this money for her two boys.
People watching people dying. How grotesque is that? Meanwhile, we in Pakistan are hooked on the robust crew of Yin and Yang. Their yammer may get to us at times, but at least it’s funny and not morbid.
aniaz@fas.harvard.edu
