By
Lt Col (Retd) Tariq Mahmood Butt,TI(M)
The word dirty implies, unclean, grimy, filthy, soiled foul, sullied polluted and grubby. Were Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf all that? Gosh, we had almost 19 years 9 months of all that. Irk--- that is really depressing. I looked towards the collage on my wall and found that many of my Army career pictures, which I once cherished to see and share with pride were suddenly filthy, I started hallucinating manure pouring out of my one dearly held memories. A group photo with Gen Zia on my passing out parade. Really good photos with Gen Musharraf on exercises and a commendation on my book of poetry. Dam I even got my promotion at his hands not to mention the encrypted Tamgha-e- Imtiaz.
Correct me if I ‘am wrong. Does filth produce filth? Well if that is true, at least two major share holders of today’s parliament are products of Zia and Musharraf respectively. Can they deny it? Its all part of history, but wait there is a lot of talk nowadays on rewriting and abolishing certain portions of South Asian history. The other day I read an article titled “Revisiting Sheikh Mujib-ur Rehman” by Javed Qazi dated 21 March 2010. The author argued on rewriting South Asian History. History, I believe is usually a chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events. The formation or determining of actual history takes a long time. People tend to write their beliefs and viewpoints as factual information, when that is not always the case. It can be very difficult to determine what is true when different people are presenting different "truths." Time passes, people read these things, and believe them to be true, as the authors believed them to be true. The huge problem is, oftentimes we really don’t know what the actual fact is. Current events in our case, ‘The lawyers Movement’ and Musharraf’s stepping down are being observed by us, we are aware as we are reading opinions. But at some point in time someone's opinion turns into history. The dilemma of Erstwhile East Pakistan is all part of history. Changing known facts is definitely an Interesting opinion....one, I think that is actually far more complicated the more you think about it! But my humble opinion is, it should never purposefully be rewritten because the best shot we have at not repeating history is to be aware of it and aware of what failed as well as what worked.
Coming back to the “Dirty Dictators” the web is filled with the chronology of what all these dictators did. We got to remove them as well. I wonder why they skipped Field Marshall Ayub, was it becoz he gave them Islamabad? Now Islamabad can’t be dirty, you know the parliament is there and many other things etc. etc.
All gloomy I went to the web to get a list of all the dirty dictators of the world --- to my surprise the word dirty has been used so extensively that I was feeling all better. In Punjabi culture(American as well), a bigger abuse depicts a greater personality, affiliation and realtionship. The funniest part, topping the list was a blog http:// www.dirtydictators.com titled “sweet dreams”. Clicking the address I found picture of Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hugging another dirty chap. With no text written I cliked once again and found Eurythmics singing “Sweet Dreams”. A lovely song I couldn’t resist singing and dancing along. The lyrics went about some corruption and abuse of power etc. But hey! what if 2 of my ex services Chiefs were dirty and why the hell should I listen to sweet dreams I ‘am more then contended with Amir Khan’s Three Idiots version of, "ALL IS WELL "
Lt Col (Retd) Tariq Mahmood Butt,TI(M)
The word dirty implies, unclean, grimy, filthy, soiled foul, sullied polluted and grubby. Were Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf all that? Gosh, we had almost 19 years 9 months of all that. Irk--- that is really depressing. I looked towards the collage on my wall and found that many of my Army career pictures, which I once cherished to see and share with pride were suddenly filthy, I started hallucinating manure pouring out of my one dearly held memories. A group photo with Gen Zia on my passing out parade. Really good photos with Gen Musharraf on exercises and a commendation on my book of poetry. Dam I even got my promotion at his hands not to mention the encrypted Tamgha-e- Imtiaz.
Correct me if I ‘am wrong. Does filth produce filth? Well if that is true, at least two major share holders of today’s parliament are products of Zia and Musharraf respectively. Can they deny it? Its all part of history, but wait there is a lot of talk nowadays on rewriting and abolishing certain portions of South Asian history. The other day I read an article titled “Revisiting Sheikh Mujib-ur Rehman” by Javed Qazi dated 21 March 2010. The author argued on rewriting South Asian History. History, I believe is usually a chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events. The formation or determining of actual history takes a long time. People tend to write their beliefs and viewpoints as factual information, when that is not always the case. It can be very difficult to determine what is true when different people are presenting different "truths." Time passes, people read these things, and believe them to be true, as the authors believed them to be true. The huge problem is, oftentimes we really don’t know what the actual fact is. Current events in our case, ‘The lawyers Movement’ and Musharraf’s stepping down are being observed by us, we are aware as we are reading opinions. But at some point in time someone's opinion turns into history. The dilemma of Erstwhile East Pakistan is all part of history. Changing known facts is definitely an Interesting opinion....one, I think that is actually far more complicated the more you think about it! But my humble opinion is, it should never purposefully be rewritten because the best shot we have at not repeating history is to be aware of it and aware of what failed as well as what worked.
Coming back to the “Dirty Dictators” the web is filled with the chronology of what all these dictators did. We got to remove them as well. I wonder why they skipped Field Marshall Ayub, was it becoz he gave them Islamabad? Now Islamabad can’t be dirty, you know the parliament is there and many other things etc. etc.
All gloomy I went to the web to get a list of all the dirty dictators of the world --- to my surprise the word dirty has been used so extensively that I was feeling all better. In Punjabi culture(American as well), a bigger abuse depicts a greater personality, affiliation and realtionship. The funniest part, topping the list was a blog http:// www.dirtydictators.com titled “sweet dreams”. Clicking the address I found picture of Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hugging another dirty chap. With no text written I cliked once again and found Eurythmics singing “Sweet Dreams”. A lovely song I couldn’t resist singing and dancing along. The lyrics went about some corruption and abuse of power etc. But hey! what if 2 of my ex services Chiefs were dirty and why the hell should I listen to sweet dreams I ‘am more then contended with Amir Khan’s Three Idiots version of, "ALL IS WELL "
No comments:
Post a Comment