Column by Ejaz Haider
One of the reasons Lahoris range from being fat to obese to morbidly obese is because without this secret advantage half the city would take off like a missile after a good hearty meal, that principle having being discovered by Newton some centuries ago
Having a bagpiper at the dinner table, I am told, had many uses, most important that one could break wind without being embarrassed. From enjoying the tunes to using tunes to drown out fart sounds is what makes up the distance from the sublime to the ridiculous. And nothing, if you ask me, is more impressive than an act which binds the two extremes in a single, seamless continuum. What did you think sex was all about?
But while the bagpiper could not do much about the smell, a US-based company called The Pond Inc., has come up with special underwear which traps any pongs or whiffs and makes the world flatulence-free.
The underwear is called, if you please, Subtle Butt. Subtle is not what one associates with ***** in Lahore whether the b is upper case or lower case. But it seems the underwear is so called because of its attributes. As one review goes, it has an activated carbon fabric pad, measuring 3.25 x 3.25 square, which adheres to the inside of the underwear with two self-adhesive strips. As the wind breaks, Subtle Butt filters the flatulence, absorbing and neutralising its odour.
Fart pads they are, essentially. But imagine going to a shop and picking up a pack which says Fart Pads. Now compare it with Subtle Butt. Who wins?
The (B)(b)utt business in Lahore can be pretty confusing. While in writing one can differentiate X or Y Butt from butt, orally it is a tough one.
In this city one can see shops with signboards like Butt Jewellers, Butt Cloth Merchant, Butt Hairdressing, Butt Sweets, Butt Kebab and of course my all-time favourite (courtesy Qasim Nauman), Butt Surveying Instruments Co. The last one, if you want to check it out, is located in Suite # 4, Basement Anarkali Plaza Lahore.
No (B)(b)utt in this city has ever been accused of being subtle. But Subtle Butt is likely to do bloody good business in this town which loves nihaari, paaye (trotters), haleem and hareesa, sajji, murgh-chholay and a number of other such cook-offs that are virtual intestinators.
One of the reasons Lahoris range from being fat to obese to morbidly obese is because without this secret advantage half the city would take off like a missile after a good hearty meal, that principle having being discovered by Newton some centuries ago. The only reason that has never happened so far is because the downward thrust remains weaker than the force required to lift a Lahori.
Meanwhile, the companys ad-line says, Simply stick it in the right place and youre ready for a chilli cook-off.
So, its all about sticking it in the right place. That is a principle with wide-ranging applications, if you ask me. Nike has its Just do it line. But Simply stick it in the right place seems to me to be a notch or two above that.
The downside in the case of Subtle Butt is that while it can absorb the odour, it cant do anything about the sound. That was the task of the bagpiper. It is a tad difficult to buy a bagpiper off the shelf. Neither can he be simply stuck in the right place. The company will do much good if it invented underwear that produced music along with the ability to absorb the smell.
One friend thinks that is not possible. You cant have everything taken care of in one package, is how he put it. My own take is that in this world everything is possible. Look at Sarah Palin; she could be veep in November and she could even be the president. That would make her luckier than Mr Zardari and it is not every day one gets that lucky.
Ok, forget Ms Palin. Take Senator Joe Biden, supposed to be some kind of foreign policy expert. Heres what he said about Pakistans nuclear capability:
Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. Pakistan already has deployed nuclear weapons. Pakistans weapons can already hit Israel and the Mediterranean. Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be very, very destabilising... So theyre both very dangerous. They both would be game-changers (emphasis added).
He could be veep. But what does what he said mean? Pakistan does not have deployed nuclear weapons; Pakistan does not have missiles that can reach Israel or the Mediterranean; and Pakistan and Iran cannot be bracketed in terms of nuclear capability, the two cases being completely different.
This is not the place to do a serious analysis of Senator Bidens gaffe, but the debates and the shibboleths that are being mouthed send out pongs of a different kind and while Subtle Butt can take care of flatulence involving holes in the nether-region, how does one take care of this other kind?
Fellow columnist Rafia Zakaria says she hates the way Ms Palin parades her Downs baby around. Maybe. But then American politics has other Downs babies too. Israel is one. Democrat or Republican, you have to love it. You cant be up on that podium if you didnt. X number of dangerous places in the world must be on your list too or you arent patriotic enough.
Wall Street may be greedy but Main Street is dumb. What the four high actors are doing is mouthing mainstream platitudes. No one questions the fact that danger is never a one-way street. If Iran is a danger to America, perhaps America is no less a danger to Iran. In fact more since America has greater capability to create chaos than Iran can likely develop in the next hundred years.
Cmon folks, take the advice of The Pond Inc ad. Simply stick it in the right place and you would know how it feels to the non-Americans. That should take care of the odour thats coming out of these debates.
