Gas out

 Published in The Friday Times on April 18-24, 2008

Sir, 

I had been wondering why the gas pressure in my home had suddenly decreased until I read that some people had installed gas generators to be used during the frequent power outages which are turning the people of Karachi into nervous wrecks. I had always thought that using Sui gas for this purpose was illegal, unless special permission had been acquired beforehand. However, instead of penalising those who are indulging in this blatantly illegal activity, the Southern Sui Gas company has come up with an NRO of its own. It has decided to "regularise" what is unlawful by charging Rs. 1,200 per kva from those who are breezily violating the law. This translates into a one-time payment of 6,000 for a 5 kva generator, the most commonly used variety. But again, those who choose not to deposit this amount can still go scot-free. How will the SSGC know who is using gas generators unless the users themselves inform the company? 

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

Plagiarist Purge

 Published in The Friday Times on March 14-20, 2008

Sir,

It was good to hear that Punjab University finally took action against the plagiarists, but merely sending them into early retirement was not enough. Some kind of financial penalty together with appropriate measures to ensure that the guilty ones do not get employed in other colleges or universities would have been more suitable. There is nothing now which can prevent these felons taking up teaching and influencing young minds again. Were they let off lightly because of their links to a religious party which has made the university a hostage for many years now?

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

'Whose soul left the world?'

 The basic flaw in Mr. M.N.Huda's reasoning (Dawn, Aug 6) in his apparent assumption that nothing would be discernible in a man who has lost his soul and received another man's soul. If the souls were really switched, as he asserts, Dr. Blaiberg should logically have emerged from the operation a completely different person, with the mind, memory and personality of the donor of his new heart. But this did not happen, as anyone can verify by reading Dr. Blaiberg's "To the last heart-beat.

I remember two novels based on this theme, which Mr. Huda would do well to go through. They are Edgar Wallace's "Captain Of Souls" and "The Little Nugget" by P.G. Wodehouse.

Shakir Lakhani

Karachi

All in a word

 Publshed in The Friday Times in 2009

 Sir,

There is a tendency among Pakistani Muslims to misspell the name of the famous writer Kahlil Gibran as Khalil Gibran. For those who don't know, Kahlil Gibran was a Mamronite Christian from Lebanon. He settled in the US and eventually died there. The 'g' in his name is pronounced as 'g' in the word 'gate'. Most Arabs pronounce the 'g' correctly, with the exception of Saudis who pronounce it as 'j'. The meaning of the word 'kahlil' is 'field'.

Shakir Lakhani 

Trump will make sure there's no peace in the world

It's evident now that Trump is a greedy, vicious slob who does whatever Netanyahu tells him to do. Every time there's a chance that a peace deal with Iran will be reached, he gets a call from the Zionist killer, and he backs out. I doubt that Trump will honor any peace agreement with Iran (if ever there is one).

Despite the ceasefire declared last month, Trump continues to attack Iran. After two bombings of Bandar Abbas, supposedly to defend attacks from Iran, he expects us to believe that he wants a peace deal. His latest threat is to finish off Oman (if the latter agrees with Iran to impose a toll on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. This should be enough for him to be declared a war criminal by the UN.

The most convincing proof that he's a Zionist agent came when he demanded that all Muslim nations join the Abraham Accords, meaning that they should recognize the genocide committing apartheid state. He doesn't know that Muslims hate Israel for its killing of Palestinians.

Then there's the wealth he's accumulating by manipulating the markets. Everytime he bombs or threatens Iran, the stock market declines and he and his cronies buy cheap shares. Then he announces that a peace treaty with Iran is imminent, the market goes up and he sells his shares. The man is 80, so why does he want so much? 

Why so many honor killings on Pakistan?

It happens so many times that I'm no longer surprised when a girl elopes with a boy from another tribe and both are killed a few days later. The police, who are remarkably inefficient normally, are easily able to locate and arrest the runaway couple.

In the latest case, the girl's family burnt all the houses in the village where the boy lived. The father of the girl claimed that she is only 14 years old, and the marriage should be declared illegal. The girl says she's 20, but the irony here is that most girls in the rural areas are married off as soon as they attain puberty (which happens at the age of 12 or 13).

I remember a woman with three daughters whose husband was a drug addict. She used to work for a neighbor of mine and asked her employer to help her in getting a divorce (the employer was a female lawyer). The husband got the notice from the court, and he immediately came over with ten armed men. I was struck by the fact that he didn't want his wife to return, he demanded that she surrender her three daughters to him (whom he could sell to support his drug habit).

I've wondered many times if the men of this country will ever learn to treat women as humans, but I doubt if this will happen in my lifetime. 

Why do some people live longer than others?

I've always been interested in longevity, why some people live longer than their close relatives. I've seen men die before the age of 65 or 70, while their wives and sisters lived up to the age of 85 or even 90. Last week, a distant male relative aged 55 kicked the bucket, but his father is still around even though he's over 80. The father's three brothers died before they attained the age of 70, and (like him) they were chain smokers and consumed mostly unhealthy food.

I have another male relative approaching 80 who has been a heavy smoker, yet he's healthy (his wife and her two sisters died in their early sixties). So what is it that makes some people live long, while others are not so lucky?

Perhaps it's hereditary. But again, in the case of the 55 year old cited above, the father is still alive, so heredity can't be the deciding factor. It's possible that the father spent a lot of time walking when he was young (most people didn't have motorbikes or cars in those days), so his heart is healthy. 

In my case, two doctors warned me that I wouldn't live past forty or fifty. One of them died at the young age of 45 or 50, while I'm still around, approaching 82.

Trump virtually insulted by the Chinese

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The Chinese are very subtle when they want to insult someone. Where an American would yell "S.o.b.!", a Chinese guy would merely point his index finger. During Trump's visit to China, he was insulted badly, although he doesn't know how much.

Trump expected Chinese President Xi Jinping to hug him on arrival. Instead, the prime minister greeted him, and when Trump was taken to meet Xi, the latter welcomed him with just a handshake. Being welcomed by a prime minister (the president's junior) at the airport signified that China doesn't view Trump with respect, a mere handshake shows that Xi doesn't think that Trump is as important as he thinks he is. In fact, it is reported that the Iranian foreign minister was shown more courtesy during his visit (which was a couple of days before Trump's).

Another insult to Trump was that the Chinese government's website completely ignored him during his visit. On Chinese social media websites, private individuals were allowed to make fun of Trump (something which was banned during the visits of Tajikistan's president and that of the Iranian foreign minister).

But the biggest insult of course was Xi warning Trump not to fall in the Thucydides trap. When Trump was told of its meaning, he lost his temper but later said that Xi was referring to the US's decline during Joe Biden's rule. But whatever he may believe, it's apparent that his visit was a failure. Note how, immediately upon returning to the US, he asked Taiwan not to declare independence.

 

India is no longer a democracy

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Modi's party (BJP) has swept to power in many states which it had never ruled so far. It has done so mainly by removing the names of more than ten million Muslims in voters' lists in West Bengal and many more in other states like Assam (where Muslims comprise more than thirty percent of the population). The Indian Election Commission is headed by someone appointed by Modi, so it colluded with him in disenfranchising Muslim voters. It's evident now that India is a one-party state (like China), and it is no longer what its founding fathers had hoped it would be (a secular democracy).

Modi had postponed raising fuel prices as that would have meant alienating voters, but now Indian newspapers predict that petrol and diesel prices will soon shoot up (LPG prices have already gone up by fifty percent). So we know why Modi appealed to his fellow Indians to conserve fuel, stop importing gold and reduce traveling to other countries, to conserve foreign exchange. It must've shocked those Indians who've been brainwashed into believing that their country's economy is the third largest in the world. If the Iran war continues, India will no longer be able to pretend that it's like China or the US.

Will the UAE be able to survive?

With the imminent peace deal between the US and Iran, there is every possibility that Israel and the UAE will try their best to sabotage the deal, as both want the Islamic Republic to be bombed into the Stone Age. But what the UAE rulers don't seem to realize is that their country is the most vulnerable to attacks from Iran, as it is only about 50 km away. Already predictions are being made that instead of Iran, it will be the UAE that will be reduced to rubble. And there are many reasons to believe that the UAE will not be able to survive this war.

By leaving OPEC to put Saudi Arabia and its other neighbors in a quandary (they will have to reduce oil prices, affecting their revenue), the UAE has no friends in the region (except of course Israel). So presently it is just like a colony of the Jewish apartheid state. But even Israel will not be able to help it rebuild its damaged infrastructure, and no foreigner would be willing to invest in the UAE after its currency collapses. 

The UAE was once part of Oman, and that is how it might end up (perhaps Abu Dhabi will be able to remain independent, if its oil wells survive the war).