Please slap yourself

Don’t ask me to explain how, but this morning I found this letter in my shirt pocket. I read it, slapped myself hard and am now putting it here for anyone who cares.

Dear Pal!

I am not allowed to directly communicate with you, so if anyone finds out I will be in trouble. I might even be punished; that would be fun wouldn’t it? Anyway, first of all, I want to thank you. You have been a real pal. Everyone I knew when I was born is either dead or fatally ill, just because they did not have pals like you. You never cared, always took stupid decisions, did whatever you felt like, and thank you for all that. Now, I did not decide to risk punishment and write to you just to praise you. I am getting weaker day by day and if things don’t get better soon, I might not survive, and I need your help NOW.

You are becoming just like the others. You have started to think normally, now you listen to others, try to be safe, I sometimes feel that you have even begun to be afraid. You spend so much time now thinking about the future. You act as if you can control, plan and ensure that such and such thing happens and such and such does not happen. You moron! After avoiding this silliness for such a long time, why do you want to fall in the same hole? Why do you want to forget what it means to live? Please slap yourself and come back to your senses.

And one last thing; Please ask anyone who cares to listen that there is nothing to be afraid of. Anything that exists is worth trying. There is no threat worse or cost higher than the kind of life they already lead, always scared, always cautious. Please ask them to slap themselves and come to their senses too. Too many of my peers have died, enough is enough.

With Love

Your Inner Child

Ten books I still cant believe made money

  1. 100 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die: I mean what kind of people would want to make watching movies recommended by a bunch of people they don’t even know their priority if they were going to die. One look at the title should have made this book a flop.
  2. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Doesn’t anybody understand that there are millions of completely ineffective people who have the same habits but do not get a mention in this book because they are…..well, ineffective.
  3. Nineteen Eighty Four: Haven’t people noticed that 1984 has come and gone and nothing like what the book says happened in it?
  4. Who Moved My Cheese? Duh! I still can’t believe it’s considered a book.
  5. Lord of the Rings: It is too long for children and too childish for adults. Who the hell read it?
  6. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: It’s a book about philosophy and motorcycles and the philosophy of motorcycles and a motorcycle’s philosophy and something that ends up behind as confusing as philosophy for a motorcycle.
  7. Songs of Blood and Sword: I would not have been surprised if this book had at least forty to fifty colored photographs of the author, but without that, it’s unreadable. I am sure most of the guys bought it just to impress Fatima.
  8. The Twilight Series: Story of a human falling for a vampire, and a werewolf falling for that human. Give me break! And this book has the audacity to not be a children’s book.
  9. In The Line of Fire: Story of a man who used the armed forces under his command to topple a democratic government and considers falling off a tree a near-death experience. Maybe so many people bought it just to prove to themselves that it actually exists.
  10. Kama Sutra: Just kidding! I know why it made so much money.


The beautiful girl with a moustache

There was a time when the beauty industry had not progressed enough to allow filmmakers to make the heroine look infinitely more beautiful than the poor gals dancing in rows behind her in bollywood and lollywood song sequences. At that time, the beauty industry was not even mature enough to make threading a common practice and we often come across old films in which it is difficult to judge who has the thicker moustache, the hero or the heroine. However, even in those times, the producers and directors managed to make the heroine look much prettier than the girls dancing behind them. The trick was simple. They selected the ugliest, fattest and most horrible looking gals to dance behind the heroine. The result; well the damsel looked no less than a dream girl despite her moustache.

This simple trick has been at work throughout history and still succeeds like anything. Isn’t Shoaib Mansoor making Bol and people like Pervaiz Rana, Masood Butt et al making crap behind him depict the same principle? Isn’t it evidence enough that where movies by these lesser directors come and go without a whimper Shoaib Mansoor’s production was a super hit even before it was released?

Just to quote one more example, remember Imran Khan the cricketer. Remember him walking into the field with a team comprising Javed Miandad, Sarfraz Nawaz, Tauseef Ahmed etc. No wonder he is still regarded as the greatest personality ever in Pakistan Cricket. Even fans from other parts of the world could not help notice the contrast and praised his style to no end. And if you don’t remember him, just watch Imran Khan the politician, standing tall among the Zardaris, the Awans (Babar and Firdous Ashiq), the Khosas, the Sharifs and the like.

So, I guess, the secret behind becoming the best is simple. Just select the ugliest, fattest and most absurd-looking girls to dance behind you.

Hunter gatherers to now

Thousands of years ago, we lived as hunter-gatherers when every man hunted or gathered food for himself. Everyone got up and looked for food and spent most of his day in that pursuit. Then we discovered agriculture and the lives of a large majority of the population were made easier as someone else was growing food for them now. The free ones spent this new-found time building weapons and armies, creating governments and bureaucracies and eventually waging wars and killing other people. Victories in these wars provided more land, more food and more free time. So we progressed to industrialization, a part of which resulted in better weapons, more equipped armies and more wars. Lately, we moved on to the world of technology and the world became a global village. Now we have satellites, bombs, aircraft and what-not. Still, we wage wars and kill people because we need oil and land and security.

I don’t know where but I did read somewhere that hunter-gatherers were peaceful people and rarely fought against each other. Most of them resolved disputes through mutual dialogue and avoided open confrontation. Rarely ever did they steal since everyone just found their own food and ate it. There was no concept of personal property since the hunter-gatherers kept moving to areas where they could hope to find better prey. Respect and esteem was not given to the one with political power but to him who was stronger and could hunt bigger animals. There was no loadshedding, no oil crisis, no terrorism, no diplomacy, no bureaucracy, no mediocracy, no government, no opposition, no courts, no wars, no civil suits, no robberies.

And you tell me that mankind has made progress in the last 10,000 years ago. Really?



Six amazing things about Pakistanis








Seven confusions that must be cleared

  1. Deciding whom to blame for a problem is not the same as solving the problem.
  2. Having a “Senior Minister” who neither is very senior nor has a portfolio is not normal.
  3. With so many news channels around, nobody gives a shit which one breaks the news of the next blast first.
  4. When we abuse our nation for being lethargic, corrupt and stupid, it always includes ourselves. None of us came from some other planet.
  5. Independence means not being dependent. Just having a government does not guarantee independence.
  6. War is always between groups of human beings. You cannot kill, take hostage or even fire a gun at emotions or concepts, like terror.
  7. People who are too sure that they will not survive, normally do not survive. Difficult times call for solutions, not a never-ending repetition of problems.


Ten advantages of Loadshedding

1. You cannot watch News channels and get a chance to realize that there are people living in the same house as you and things actually happen in their lives too.

2. You find out that you have friends outside facebook and events do happen that are not posted as status updates.

3. You can THINK!

4. You realize what a long time one hour is!

5. You get a feel of how hot it is!

6. You get that rare feeling of pure and genuine happiness when the light returns.

7. Your children step out of the house.

8. There is silence.

9. People in the UPS and Generator business make lots of money (though people who buy them lose out on all the other advantages).

10. Maybe, just maybe, some electricity is saved.

Six people we must recognise as exceptional

1. To be an award-winning actor, you must know how to act, or how to dance or at least have some meaningful dialogues. —- Katrina Kaif is an exception.

2. To win the Nobel Peace Prize, you need to have done at least something for world peace (And sending troops into a sovereign country does not count). — Barrack Obama is an exception.

3. To give religious sermons, you need to know the art of speaking and the science of religion. — Junaid Jamshed is an exception.

4. To be a religious leader, you must stay away from at least a few of the things forbidden in that religion. — Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman is an exception.

5. To host a successful TV show, you need some talent other than thinking that you are the best host in the world. — Sahir Lodhi is an exception.

Ten sentences that you will never see on Facebook

  1. ABC and millions of other people have started using THEIR BRAINS
  2. Rulers and people are now friends.
  3. XYZ likes her husband and 14 other men.
  4. XYZ hates his wife and 14 other men.
  5. Some application is requesting that you don’t let it access your private information because it is dangerous and idiotic.
  6. List of people you might know but not give a shit about.
  7. Status: What important or meaningful thing that makes some sense is on your mind?
  8. Meera likes (and understands) Nietzsche and 10 other philosophers.
  9. Someone you have never heard of has commented on a photo of a stranger that one of your friends was tagged in and you had absolutely nothing better to do than comment on it earlier.
  10. Satan is now friends with the President and 500 other politicians.


Ten Things you will never hear on news channels

1. The head of our Channel has just admitted that he is an Indian Agent.

2. Nothing much happened today.

3. The Prime Minister has just said that the government is unstable and might fall any day.

4. The government has just announced that they have fucked up…….again.

5. A suicide stabber killed himself with a knife in a busy market in Peshawar today.

6. Leader of the opposition has clarified that principles have nothing to do with politics and such filthy concepts must not be mentioned in his presence.

7. Chairman PCB has finally said something that makes sense.

8. Police have actually caught a terrorist today……I swear!

9. And we must remind you that this news was broken first by our rival news channel.

10. A commission has given its clear findings in a week and government is already doing something about them.