Some time ago an article caught my attention while I was reading the newspaper. It was written that Punjab University’s Department of Folly held a ceremony honoring a renowned writer. Indeed, Punjab University, just like other universities from time to time, had committed such follies before (considering giving me a degree was one such example).
Such as hosting the Kathiawar Trade Groups’ merchants’ gathering where the Presiding Officer informed the merchant gatherers that the millionaire siblings, Brother Cottonseed and Brother Press-cake, owners of Cottonseed Warehouses, had received a portent recitation from above for all to preclude further study after learning to sign signatures, count numbers and then timetables et cetera, which would be sufficient enough. Learning further than this godsend threshold would be in itself a folly.
However, I was unaware that Punjab University had permanently created a Department of Folly so that those who want to specialize in this field of study would be allowed to acquire such a degree in the future and to impart their acquired wisdom onto future students.
“My Message is Folly
As far as Its’ reach”
It came to mind that, perchance, this dispatch might be an inscription error. Because extreme folly is not some law or geography that you learn by studying. This is a God-given. Like the saying goes, “A gift of God will make its way through stone walls.”
At this time there are ao many people possessed with this illustrious craft that in the former half of Indo-Pak, there are assemblies of folly and in the latter half there are clubs of folly, all of whose branches are spreading outwards, everywhere and congregating.
Included in Indo-Pak’s Assemblies of Folly are politicians. Or, then again, maybe as senators, they’re representative of Clubs of Folly. But, of them, I doubt any needs to study folly as a subject. Whether it is or is not, this must be the Medieval Department of Defraud, encompassing all—from cosmology to phlebotomy!
Ours truly, the Invisible Religious Scholar, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and his congregation were trying for a long time to get these skills inserted into the arts and sciences as part of the university curriculum. From now onwards, at last, this effort is bearing fruit. Now higher education is as such: In one classroom, a tenured professor is lecturing about the differences between the philosophies of Rene Descartes and Arthur Schopenhauer. In the next classroom, the professor—or Department Head of [Faith] Defraud, will be informing his students how much soap is required to soften the hairs of beards, so it will become easier to shave your customers with the cunningness entailed in shaving them with the reverse, hence smooth, side of the razor knife.
After further investigations conducted, neither folly nor defraud selected after so many considerations and deliberations, the news is relegated to the Department of Journalism. Why do copyists choose folly over journalism? Is there the possibility of the copyist not getting his paycheck on time? Despite such circumstance, a confidant telling the whole truth is not good discourse, is it? If adherence to journalism is folly then this secret should be kept inside your heart as freemasons kept theirs in antiquity. That is, don’t divulge outside your fraternity. But now it is too late to regret it, as the saying goes. I knew this saying for twenty years, but I was not so lowly to keep sharing this secret with everyone outside my circle. The case was the same with my hundreds of journalist brothers, That once they had accrued whatever folly, they kept enduring its repercussion. Some even feign as if they are saying something quite intelligent. The truth is such, that if there is folly, it takes some time to set in as folly. Nowadays I am realizing that because I write simply, whatever matter is close to my heart, with a sense of humor; whatever the end result is, it comes before you just like the stylist’s client’s hair-cuttings on the floor.
Still so, when the truth sets into print and gets burdensome on the delicate nature of a particular group, bodies within that delicate delegation show up with clubs and demand, “Bring out that person!”
In Lahore, Pakistan, one of my friends was an editor of the cinema section in a newspaper. Some day he wrote that the film Two of Spades had such weak dialogue that the story collapsed like deadweight. He was unaware that the film’s producer was a very famous wrestler and the next day came face-to-face with the furious pugilist and his young disciples. He grabbed that journalist by the collar and indignantly declared, “If the dialogues were weak, know that we are not weak! And if the story is without life, then tell us what lifeforce you possess! You puny fellow! Come outside and let’s have a wrestling match!” Nonetheless, people started to gather and, with great difficulty, settled the matter. Before leaving, the wrestler threatened and warned, “If in the future, or hereafter, or from now on, you write about my films as inferior as in this review, then you will have to pay for that! I will perform on you a wrestling trick just as a washerman dashes down a cloth. After that, you will be spending your entire life nursing your bruised body.”
Presently, the state of affairs is a lot better. Journalists are getting their pay and being allowed to play tambola [bingo] at their Press Club. In the old days, there was the familiar pleasure of a closed up room in which you picked up a pen in your hand and the entire world stood before you with folded arms, a universal sign of respect. One rebuked Hitler, “Don’t dare to even take two steps forward! In such a case as that, I will write such an editorial that you will come crawling on your knees to apologize!”
And I also told our government that they must understand that I am not afraid. I can sell my home for the freedom to write and I have sold my home. I can sell my clothes and I have sold my clothes. I can sell my watch and I really have! But can never sell my pen! Cannot sell my conscience! I’m admonishing Israelis that THAT is quite an excessive injustice! Look here! Now the cup of our patience is running over! Dare not hit us!
Our noble late Maulana Akhtar Ali Khan’s THAT story is very famous; when he went to England and met Prime Minister Clement Attlee and boomed, “Look here, Sir! Resolve the dispute of Kashmir immediately! For that, I am allowing you a grace period of one month or…” PM Attlee lost his senses and stars started to dance before his eyes; in a thin voice he inquired, “Then what?”
Maulana Akhtar Ali Khan roared, “Otherwise, I will write an antithetical editorial in the Zemindar Newspaper!”
Ah! That was the zest! When journalists suffered losses, became paupers, yet still published the news! One of my friends had a weekly newspaper that he edited, arranged, and published by himself and then delivered to the newsstands too. Then he would call the merchant for payment for the advertisements published as such, “Sir, the payment is overdue. I am sending my peon to collect it.”
After this, he would sit on his bike while holding a bag and ride to the merchant’s office. Inside the merchant’s office, he would talk to the advertiser as such, “Sir, I am sent by my Editor. He is very displeased and wants his payment right away.”
Of course, within his editorials and columns, his clamor, authority, and pride were to be observed!
Alas, woe is that the days of zest went alongside the departing Britishers.
Some two years back, another friend of mine got a job as a columnist for a newspaper after many recommendations. In his very first column, he proclaimed his pen as Sacred and Truth as his duty. “Other than my conscience, I will not be answerable to anyone. If President Ayub Khan will do anything wrong, then I won’t hesitate to grab his collar!”
The next day we awaited his next column. Third day again, we awaited. Then kept waiting every day after that. His column never appeared in print, to be discovered he was kicked out of a career in journalism entirely, sitting idle at home and masticating roasted garbanzo beans while reciting this verse over and over, “I grabbed their collars a hundred times in my hands! But when I woke up, I realized I was grabbing my own collar!”
THE END.
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