THE OTHER COLUMN: Blessed be DHA! —Ejaz Haider

[Elmo]

THE OTHER COLUMN: Blessed be DHA! —Ejaz Haider



Let’s say I want to open a bank — perish the thought that I ever could but assumption is also a kind of imagination — and want to name it. What would be the most imaginative name for it? There, you got it! Ejaz Haider Bank!

Former General Pervez Musharraf, responsible for sundry misdemeanours and acts of treason like violating the Constitution, allying Pakistan with the US, Man’s banishment from Eden and attempting rather poorly to sing a semi-classical song, while in power heaped praise on Defence Housing Societies. I agree with him. A place which has a block called DD and another XX must be worth living in.

Since expansion at DHA Lahore is still going on, there is likely to be a block XXX, though anything beyond DD would perhaps be one D too many even for those who love Punjabi flicks.

In theory, imagination can have vast possibilities. In practice, after having Blocks A B C D and so on, you can only have AA, BB, CC and, yes, DD. By the way, if blocks were to have their own insignias, what would be that of DD; two busty blondes, the Lahori peroxide ones?

This double this and that is like if you have one son called Z and you think you did a good job of begetting him (highly optimistic) you call the other ZZ to celebrate a good score second time running. I think that is the logic behind DHA’s naming of the blocks.

Mercifully, the argument about Urdu-ising has eluded the DHA or we could likely end up with blocks laam, noon and ddaal, among others. They would be funny even in the singular; to have them as laam-laam and noon-noon and ddaal-ddaal would be one laam, noon, and ddaal too many.

Imagination of course is not a national strong-point. If we don’t have Ds and DDs, we have the confined pool of heroes from Islamic history which pulls in good Arabs and Afghans and Turks and puts them in solid Punjabi milieu. Imagine a gujjar with dudh day dabbay on his bike going down Tariq bin Zayad Road. Imagine another, on a Tota Krola, with GUJJAR emblazoned in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre script on the rear windshield draving doan Mohammad bin Qasim Road.

Which reminds me that in a country where at least 80 percent names begin with Mohammad this and Mohammad that, barely 10 percent can pronounce Mohammad correctly. For most it is Mahmed with “h” barely stressed and “a” rendered aa.

But back to the issue of imagination. Let’s say I want to open a bank — perish the thought that I ever could but assumption is also a kind of imagination — and want to name it. What would be the most imaginative name for it? There, you got it! Ejaz Haider Bank!

Or Ejaz Garments; Ejaz Bakery; Ejaz Electronics; Ejaz Tailors; Ejaz Stationery Store; Ejaz Paan “Shaap” (with Ejaz in all cases pronounced “Ja(h)z”). The possibilities are endless and if they are grounded in directness of the most direct kind, rather than the wishy-washy imagination and the abstract, it is because we are open people and for the most part clear and decided about things.

The philosopher types would pooh-pooh our directness but they haven’t been able to give to the world much except abstract ideas that beget concrete miseries. And if concrete misery is going to be the concluding chapter of life in most cases anyway then it would seem logical to start by shunning abstractions.

This doesn’t cut ice with the philosopher types, though. They would reap abstraction even from the most concrete harvest; indeed, when there is nothing to be miserable about, they would think hard about being miserable because for some reason being appropriately screwed up is supposed to be an essential condition for creativity.

Which is why an average Punjabi’s imagination doesn’t go beyond the immediate, the direct and the concrete. There is no elaborate ritual for blowing his nose, or belching and burping or scratching his various chafing parts. Directness demands that you blow, belch, burp and scratch when need be. Biology and abstractness don’t make happy bedfellows. And for all the premium the philosopher types put on abstractions and existential angst and the undecidable and so on, a sneak-peek into their private lives would show that abstractions ride the pillion behind biology rather than the other way round.

Take love. Spread the paper expended on it and it will circumnavigate the globe several times and more. And yet, when it ends up in bed, it looks quite ridiculous and develops its own direct dynamics. The high embraced by the low. But if you have reached the zenith of philosophy, you can love X and be more concrete with Y and find selective misery and joy in both conditions. That is what I call imagination! It also goes by the name of post-modernism.

At least DD is not about abstract turmoil. It is as concrete and frontal as anything can get. It can cause turmoil in ways known to humankind since Man ate the forbidden fruit. Blessed then be the DHA!

Tailpiece: BTW, Musharraf’s YouTube video, I am told, is competing with **** sites for the most number of hits. The man can’t even sing without being haunted and hunted.

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

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[TaimiKhan]

This guys seems to be 'high' at the time of writing this article.

In Peshawar we say "Rocketyyy Mama"

 

[Elmo]

This guys seems to be 'high' at the time of writing this article.

In Peshawar we say "Rocketyyy Mama"

His columns are usually filled with double and triple entendres but this one has taken the cake for those written in recent times ...

 

[Patriot]

I thought Ejaz Haider was better then this

 

[TaimiKhan]

I think he did not got a plot or home in DHA during the balloting , so to take out his frustration this came out when he was really really high.

His article does not makes any sense, Look at Islamabad, how many sectors & sub-sectors are there. Anyone new in Islamabad gets mad when he hears of so many sectors & the sub-sector names. Whats the big deal if DHA is giving different names to its sectors.

 

[fatman17]

I thought Ejaz Haider was better then this

yes jockularity!

 

[Elmo]

And it just got worse...

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Daily Times - Site Edition [Printer Friendly Version]

Daily Times - Site Edition Sunday, August 30, 2009

THE OTHER COLUMN: 22-22 —Ejaz Haider

I know it is difficult to acknowledge one green entry in a dossier full of red entries, but that is the real test of objectivity. In doing unto Khan what the rightwing has done to Salam, we join the ranks of the Right

I assume most of us know about cervical dilation, including men, who are not supposed to have a cervix. Even so, let me aim for the guy in the corner who might not. Cervix, thou innocent one, is the opening to the uterus and is supposed to dilate during childbirth. It can also dilate during miscarriage or made to in an induced abortion procedure.

In other words, unbeknown to you my dear, you couldn’t have been in that corner without uterine contractions and cervical dilation.

Rest assured though that this is not a lesson in gynaecology. This is about Dr AQ Khan, our hero. The moment the government tries to keep him in, the nation’s uterus goes into spasms and the cervix dilates, threatening to push him out.

Here’s the irony of the situation. The government doesn’t want him to pop out because the womb is not just going to push him out but also secrets that are best kept hidden. Khan, on the other hand, has threatened that if he is not allowed to slip out he shall start singing from within the womb itself. I don’t envy the government.

One thing I must grant Khan, though. He is sui generis, which is a difficult Neo-Latin term for of its/his own kind; unique in characteristic. Consider.

He is supposed to be the father of our bomb, or as some wits put it, “bum”. That aside, while he mayn’t have fathered anything except his children, he did make an important, basic contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear programme. He is not a physicist, though for long this misconception held in popular circles and he didn’t bother to correct it. He is not even a top metallurgist. But he did get Pakistan gas centrifuge technology without which we could not build the bomb. To say that he stole it is to look a gift horse in the mouth. And one is not supposed to do that.

As for those who don’t like the bomb, the place of domicile is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s “We Must Disarm” Twitter page. These are tweets best suited to Twitter.

The other day a friend of a friend noted in a Facebook comment that Pakistan’s real hero was Dr Abdus Salam; that Khan is a fake hero. There is no doubt about the standing of Salam. It is to our eternal shame how we treated him and continue to. But there is tedium in this kind of argument, compare as it does wrong entities or persons and/or rely on total rejection of one to put the other on a pedestal.

What the obnoxious Right has done to Salam, the equally misplaced English-speaking class has to Khan.

Having stuck my neck out, let me explain.

Khan’s contribution is not owed to his ability to create something or push the frontiers of knowledge beyond the known. He is singularly incapable to doing that as should be obvious from his petty act of plagiarism in his newspaper column. In fact, I read carefully the plagiarised paragraphs and realised that Khan needs a crash course in the language.

Exhibit A: Khan begins the first sentence thus: “The computer is an essential part of 21st century life.” The Sussex website from where he picked it up talked about “computing” which is a broader concept and involves using and developing computer technology, computer hardware and software. So there are the theoretical and the practical aspects of the activity.

Exhibit B: Khan’s lines: “Artificial intelligence — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing reference [sic] on computer system design. Distributed systems, networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing, presenting both technical and social challenges.” Sussex website: “Computer networks and the internet are now central to the study of computing and information technology, presenting both technical and social challenges. Artificial intelligence (AI) — the study of intelligent behaviour — is having an increasing influence on computer system design.”

[For these quotes I rely on the letter by Mr Dogar, a student at Carnegie Mellon University.]

So, yes, this is not a man one can compare with Salam. Yet, does the fact that we are talking mediocrity at its most mediocre, in and of itself, take away from his contribution, original or stolen? I don’t think so. I know it is difficult to acknowledge one green entry in a dossier full of red ones, but that is the real test of objectivity. In doing unto Khan what the Right has done to Salam, we join the ranks of the Right.

Just to clarify, this is not to say that Khan may not be dealt with for his acts of omission and commission. He should be. In fact, much of the opprobrium he has attracted is owed to his own grandstanding. In thinking that he could use his contribution to demand eternal homage from the nation, he was and is wrong. But the challenge of getting the perspective correct always attends things, issues and peoples that are complex in some ways.

Take a man who has killed someone; if he also saves someone, what would our verdict be? Fifty percent bad; fifty percent good? I can keep adding to the difficulty and the corresponding challenge of categorisation but I hope the point is obvious.

It is easy to judge and praise someone like Salam. Khan offers a greater degree of difficulty. That’s the time when we generally fail the test.

Tailpiece: The other day Chaudhry Qasim saw 22-22 written on the backsad of a rickshaw. He couldn’t resist asking the rickshaw driver what it signified. The driver said, Sirji, o Inglush vich kehnday naiN na baai-baai, good-baai! Now that definitely is more original than Khan’s column!

Ejaz Haider is op-ed editor of Daily Times, consulting editor of The Friday Times and host of Samaa TV's programme “Siyasiyat”. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

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No offence but this dude needs to get ****! It's like he's stuck in time warp. Everyone in that 16-18 age group goes through discovering the other "stuff" and well most gte over it. With him, he has to regurgitate it out every week.