READ NO EVIL
Satire & Humor
By Mohammad Ali Khan
New book by Newline
Distributor: READINGS
12 K Main Boulevard Gulberge II, Lahore
92-42-35757877 Publications@readings.com.pk
Price Rs 350/- Pages 210
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Extracts
- One of the objectives of founding the state of Pakistan was to achieve freedom from the practical consequences of belief. The idea was to save ourselves from the unprofitable results of actions that are naturally expected from a faith based system. From day one of Pakistan’s conception, the nation has been conscious of the limitations of religion in the realm of the real world. To this end, it has jealously preserved the ritualistic parts of religion only- albeit as a deep seated prejudice- as against a real world faith system. This unified code of conduct has fortunately washed away all contradictions of the society.
- I proclaim myself to be the only person who can trace his ancestry generation-wise to the first man who ever set foot on this planet: Adam. If permitted, I can trace my ancestry right to the specific primate that had unwillingly turned human some six million years ago. However, in the stifling atmosphere of today, this pre-Adamite ambition might create religious misgivings and so we will stick with Adam as the starting point.
- The starting point was the question of our existence. Did we exist in our body or in our mind? Was existence a bodily function or an intellectual one? If existence was limited to the body then its size merited a greater effort; but if we existed in our mind then saving it was the priority. But saving the mind all by itself presented a logistical problem. For all practical purposes, evolution has forced the mind to get shacked up inside the body and determining how to separate it during a gravitational uncertainty was unknown to us. If we could somehow figure that out, thereby preserving the mind and its accompanying intellect, then we would have triumphed. Unfortunately, the cable car Management did not provide any emergency phone numbers of metaphysical scholars to quickly figure out that issue.
- In a little while, a relatively young lady, attractive by all standards (Eastern as well as Western) entered and introduced herself as the alleviator of my pain. Decently dressed, her claim to the virtue seemed to be a mask lowered on to her chin. As expected, she demanded to see the inside of a vista, too well-known to provide any new insights. But it came with a price: she covered her face with the mask in aversion.
- Nevertheless, my acquiescence indicated compromising a basic principle: yielding to the will of a woman; something my mother had always warned me about. It was an affront to my delicately nurtured male ego. How could a single woman armed with an excavator and a mask to protect her own modesty be so persuasive about the conclusive treatment of my pain. It was my pain, an egoistic male pain; how could a woman treat it? But before I could protest, she had sunk an injection deep into my gums, skillfully penetrating my ego.
- Demystifying European superiority with specific reference to the British has always been an appetizing proposition. Straightening out the creases of European historical fiction can best be outsourced to a bitter Oriental. Of the various queries that need to be sorted out, two stand out as the most vital. Firstly, did the Europeans constitute a distinct set of intellectual and moral ingredients as compared to their Oriental counter parts that made them discover America before them and secondly, discovering reasons for the simmering hostility between the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic nations in Britain?
- For a pre-teen growing up in a Pakistani society of the seventies, this carnal treasure could not have come at a better time. Forever conscious of my gender, this was the best opportunity to gratify the secret urge of discovering the female form to its fullest. After-effects of this exploration were not properly analyzed; it was to be a discovery for the contentment of curiosity only, as I believed at the time.
- For those of us who are in the habit of taking a shower out of social acceptance only, putting oneself through this daily pain is unfathomable. It is further exacerbated when balancing the degree of movement required for the blue and the red knobs to produce an acceptable level of water temperature. And since I do not happen to be adroit at this balancing act, the next ten minutes were spent in fidgeting with the knobs. The given condition necessitated constant ducking and flinching from the unrelenting water spray, whilst shivering uncontrollably in the cold washroom. The decision as to which body parts were more worthy of being washed as compared to the less valuable ones required a thorough understanding of the human anatomy and being a bad biology student, in my school days, there wasn’t much that could be done.
- The prayer had hardly commenced when the gentleman to my right decided to belch out a life time of accumulated evil out of his system with significant guttural inflection. Matters of digestive exuberance are supposedly involuntary, but with gluttony feeding the reflex, its unconditioned nature turns into a conditioned one. It was not just a matter of noise pollution, even the sanctified air of the mosque got contaminated with the unbranded aroma of the worst kind. It was unclear if the belched evil had existed prior to the prayer, finding the right moment when it finally decided to separate or if it were a recent phenomenon.
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