Miserable Timing

Manmohan Singh calls on Pakistan to destroy terrorists during a visit to Indian-administered Kashmir. The timing cannot be worse.

Earlier today a car bomb ripped through Peshawar's biggest and most crowded market, Meena Bazaar. The death toll has been rising since the morning and now stands at 95 people. A building has collapsed with people reportedly trapped inside. Others have been burnt to death. Hospitals have run out of blood as they struggle to treat more than 200 injured.

I've been to Meena Bazaar several years ago. I remember it as a place with narrow streets, shops spilling over each other, people thronging the lanes browsing shop after shop full of bright fabrics. A bomb there must have wreaked havoc. The pictures are nightmarish.

Even as this tragedy unfolds, Mr. Singh has decided to lecture Pakistan. If at this time, the Indian government could not find it in itself to condole Pakistan then perhaps it would have been best for it to have stayed silent.

With Pakistanis dying horrific deaths almost daily, we are well aware of the need to destroy the terrorists. Thank you very much.

Those Ten Thousand Promises

It seems that the sweet nothings that Manmohan Singh whispered into Yousaf Raza Gilani's ear at the romantic Egyptian resort have in fact come to nothing. Dialogue between India and Pakistan is once again predicated on action against terrorists. This time it is India's External Affairs Minister SM Krishna who poured cold water over the feverish promises of that brief but torrid Sharm el-Sheikh honeymoon.

Perhaps he felt obliged to play the censorious father to the blossoming Veer-Zaara love story. Or perhaps he felt duty bound to rescue our gallant Veer from disgrace. It has been clear for a while that Singh’s ardor was nowhere as openheartedly embraced in India as Veer’s was. The right has been busy castigating him for his unseemly display. But then again, from the crusaders against Valentines Day, this reaction can hardly come as a surprise.

On the other hand, Zaara it seems has been ready to take the plunge for nearly a decade. She has been strutting her markets quite seductively before Veer despite alarmed Pakistani industrialists’ best attempts to cover her up. Now if only Veer would grow a pair, make up his damned mind, Zaara’s rabid ex-fiance be put down and their families resolve their property dispute…

This saga really has dragged on for an inordinate amount of time, even by Bollywood’s extravagant standards. And the heaps of unnecessary plot twists are making this story more tiresome than Star Plus soaps. Even Yash Chopra couldn’t have come up with a more convoluted storyline.

I just want to fast-forward to the end of this god awful film, catch a weekend plane to Bombay without having to deal with the cumbersome visa and registration process and knock back a couple of mojitos with my friends there. Is that really too much to ask? Is it?

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan says it is not against girls' education – Dawn

I guess they just burn down girls schools for sport then...

All of a sudden, TTP has discovered that girls education is not against their religion. All they really want is that girls at school be forced into wearing the burqa, irrespective of the girls' individual opinions on the matter. Is that really too much to ask?

This seems to me to be part of TTP's effort to become more mainstream. They seem to have realized that education is something people want and burning schools is not really winning them any hearts or minds. So they maneuver and back-peddle on their 'unshakeable' beliefs and values. They are acting more and more like a political rather than a militant entity.

Consider another piece of news in today's Dawn: "Talking on phone from an unspecified place Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for TTP, said: “It is our (Taliban’s) responsibility to protect the country’s western border and we will stop infiltrations into Afghanistan.”"

The irony of this statement is mind-boggling. The bandits are promising to police the town when the sheriff leaves. What kind of approach is this? On any other day, we would love to blow you freedom-loving Islam-hating Pakistanis to smithereens but hey today we are ready to pitch in in your fight against India...?

This is politicking in the extreme. And the ease with which they have switched from government-toppling terror-spreading rebels to qaumi janda-waving tarana-singing patriots is evidence of such hypocrisy that would cause even our most adroitly two-faced lota politicians to gape.

I really hope no one is buying this bag of bull that the TTP is feeding.

In the aftermath

Despite caution from a lot of Indian intellectuals, India has been drifting down the same dark path that America did after 9/11. All the bloodthirsty commentating, the growing xenophobia, the draconian security laws under consideration, the obsession with what happened to the glitterati at the Oberoi and the Taj as opposed to the victims at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus: it all leaves me with a queasy feeling of things going in the wrong direction.

Latest in the series of missteps is the Oberoi Trident saying that it will not entertain Pakistani nationals at its hotel. The move is distasteful, misguided, vindictive and short-sighted. It does not entirely surprise me, but it certainly does sadden. The India-Pakistan-bhai-bhai enthusiasm of the past five years has shown itself to have been both superficial and hollow. Within days of the Mumbai attack, all that goodwill evaporated and the Pakistani and Indian media were at each other's throats; sports tournaments were cancelled; the peace process put on hold and the deep mistrust and antipathy that lay dormant for the past few years resurfaced with renewed vigour.

It is a shame. What happened in Mumbai was in no uncertain terms a tragedy. And of all the people who could empathize, Pakistanis were on top of the list for having been battered on a weekly basis by terrorist attacks for the past five years. But instead of sharing each other's sorrow and using our new cordial relationship to go after those responsible for the attacks together, leaders and citizens on both side ran to take cover behind their old jingoism and bellicose rhetoric. A dozen hate-filled twenty-somethings have managed to alter the open nature of a country of over a billion people and derail the growing friendship between millions of citizens of the estranged nations. It's a shame. A real shame.