The deadly Tango

When I redid my blog recently, changed the format, the colors, and indeed the entire focus of the blog, I was under the impression that I would be writing primarily about Malalaland, no, al-bakistan goddamn it fingers! PakiSatan. I'll take it; close enough.

I wanted to chronicle how expertly they went about paving the roads for and building the vehicles of their own demise. The professionalism with which they apply themselves to the task of, as they say in Urdu; "Abne hi bav bar kuladhi maarna" almost makes me think they have a dedicated bunch of World-Class Universities staffed by... Wait a minute, did I just say Universities? I am sorry for my cultural insensitivity, I meant Madrassahs (مدرسة) that churn out the latest in Fifth Columnists tactics and strategy.

So I imagine a bunch of skull cap and salwar wearing, henna-dyed beard sporting while simultaneously mustache lacking, god fearing and not so much women fearing, Mullahs churning out fatwa after fatwa, like their four wives churn out suicide bomber after suicide bomber every 9 months, on the latest techniques on shooting yourselves in the foot, I am betting the research is as scientific as that at any Harvard or MIT like institution, with multiple peer reviews conducted by other Mullahs far removed both geographically and ideologically and published online on various first rate Jihad websites.

The next step would be to encourage cross-pollination between the various types of Madrassahs of peace. I look fondly into the future and envision a day where I see a Barelvi Madrassah with a bunch of exchange students from the Deobandi school of thought happily learning their quran during class hours and playing with fake, IEDs, vests and AK47s during playtime hand in hand with their Barelvi counterparts. A Mullah from the Ahl-e-Hadith school of thought spreading his ideas of peace and harmony as visiting faculty, of course since Mullahs are only valid as such within their own schools of thought, we can mayhaps term these visiting Mullahs... as... Brofessors if active and Brofessor Ameeritus if retired...???

Of course, they'd need foreign help, why limit yourselves to your own ideas? Maybe they could conduct a literary retreat or a global symposium and invite some of the more illustrious fifth-columnists to attend as keynote speakers. They could call Hank Paulson, practically anyone who issued a NINJA loan back in the day, our own MMS, or even her excellency Mein-o, and it's too bad the grand-daddy or should I say grand-chacha of fifth-columnists isn't alive as he would have been perfect.

But then I realized that my own country India is the Edwin Aldrin to Pakistan's Neil Armstrong as far as self-destructive idiocy is concerned. Both of them being trailblazers in this neck of the woods if I may. Both locked in a deadly race to the end, intertwined nay joined at the hip like long lost brothers seeking to fulfill their destiny of doom. Like Karan-Arjun.

But there is a fundamental difference, in Pakistan, the looting is done by the Pakistanis themselves by emphasizing their own religion and following its tenets as rabidly as possible and is perversely optimistic in its approach. Whereas in India it is being done by foreigners by emphasizing the irrelevance and decadence of the country's indigenous religion and culture which again is perversely pessimistic in approach. And, I will be there, documenting how these two countries stumble about and whether they sober up and walk away or stray from the path and get hit and run over by the speeding train of reality.

Needless to say, we are in trouble unless we dig our heads out of the sand and recognize the elephant in the room.