Blasphemy, Photocopy and Electromagnetic Theory

Now my dear friends, once again I am back with tales from the good old Islamic Republic of Pakistan a.k.a “Mumlikat-e-Khudadaad”. Well that happened in winter of 2001/02. India had amassed its armies on Punjab borders i.e. Lahore, Sialkot and Kasur. I was studying at that time in the university. Despite the fact that we were not very far from Wagah border (a mere 45 minutes by car), the university and the classes were following the normal routine. The city however was gripped by the fear of unknown and everybody believed that the Indians would launch the offensive once the foggy/smoggy winter was over. I, on the other hand, had other things to worry about. Within a week’s time, I had to take my third year exams, considered to be, according to university urban legends, the toughest of the exams. Being the yellow that I was, I was concentrating solely on my exam preparation.

But first I should introduce you to Shareef. Shareef used to run the biggest photocopy shop in the university. Now traditionally it so happened that the professors demanded the students to submit assignments and stuff. Being the beggars that we were, not quite a lot of students tried to make these assignments indigenously. They rather relied on the individual brilliance of the few select to produce the assignment from scratch and then copied it. This, bizarrely enough, created quite a competitive attitude among the “solution providers” who then boasted in the so-called intellectual circles that their assignment was copied by, say 50 students. How did Shareef come into it? Well the “geek-group” or the “solution-providers” or the “nerd-squad”, whatever you may call them, after having solved the quiz or assignment went to Shareef and placed their solution at his disposal. Any of the students would then go to Shareef and demand that he needed a solution to a certain assignment of a certain professor by a certain nerd. Shareef would then pull him out a copy, making himself richer, in the process. Shareef enjoyed an absolute monopoly over notes, assignments, quizzes, analysis and several other kind of solutions. The university was his for the taking and he was the king. As says the song that the night time is the right time, for Shareef exam time was the right time. His services were essential even during sessions but during preps and during exams he was completely indispensable.

Now come to the another background update. As Pakistani universities, state owned that is, had become battlefields for student factions of different political parties during the so-called decade of democracy, Shahbaz Shareef, the then ex(-iled that is)-chief-minister of Punjab decided to appoint a retired Lieutenant General (yes, a Generalissimo was appointed by an elected chief minister) as university vice-chancellor to bring things under control. General sahib at once banned all political activity in the university, and as a “shock and awe” tactic expelled about 50 students on the grounds of taking part in political activities. A long legal battle ensued and many of them were re-admitted to the university but the “shock and awe” tactic had worked. But as a result, all the students organizations, Islami Jamiat Talba (Jamaat Islami Faction), PSF (PPP financed), MSF (ML financed) etc. bore a grudge against him. Generalissimo, as is the case with all the platoon commanders running Pakistan, ordered a few monuments to be constructed in the university, a few trees to be whitewashed (what is this army fetish of getting tree trunks white-washed anyway?) and changed the name of the university library from Faisal Shaheed library to Central library. I think this is really what they are capable of, these army guys; always changing the form of the things, oblivious to the content. Perhaps that’s why they have such a strong (ideological !!!) alliance with mullah group.

But now back to business, we are in Lahore with war looming around, in a campus during exam season not far away from border run by a retired General with an eccentric photocopy guy pulling strings as far as exam preparation is concerned. Plagiarism! intellectual property rights, come on we are in “mumlikat”. Smooth sailing is the order of the day. Amidst all this war-drum beating started my exams.

All was going well, up until the second-last paper, that was of Electromagnetic Theory (EMT). Now, this subject struck fear in the heart of even the nerdiest of the guys, integrations and differentiations in space and time with all three dimensions involved, spheres and cylinders, cones and ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas and a bizarre array of names like Schrödinger and Gauss: Just don’t get me started on this. We had a day off before this EMT paper. It was about 11 o’clock in the morning when I got up and got out of my hostel room to go to the toilet. I noticed an eerie silence. The normally overcrowded shower-room was totally deserted, nobody to be seen in the veranda as well, ditto for the corridors. I knocked on my neighbour’s door to find out the reason for this unusual silence but no response. I, then, went to the hostel chowkidar to inquire about that extremely bizarre situation. He wasn’t there as well. Now this was a seen right out of Devil’s Advocate, anyway I showered and changed and decided to go to the nearest café to have a brunch but what I saw there was unbelievable.

Almost the entire university was gathered around Shareef’s photocopy shop. One of the machines was on fire, while two youths were trying to set another one on fire. Two or three geysers were smashing the windows of his shop while another group was burning the pile of notes stacked in the shop. Shareef himself was nowhere to be seen. On inquiry, a junior told me that Shareef had committed blasphemy and had fled away while the angry youth were now venting out there frustration on his belongings. This, ladies and gentlemen, was an opportunity for student political parties to get into action. First of all the islami guys blocked the “Grand Trunk” road. How did they do it? Very simple buddies. They made a few buses to stop. Got all the passengers out. Gave a punch or two to poor drivers and ordered them to park right there in the middle of the road. With the help of six buses and their drivers, they had blocked the road within 15 minutes. Justice, my friends, is swift in “mumlikat”. Next step. The university had an immense fleet of buses used to bring and take students to and from their homes. They were parked in the university shed. A group of Islami guys went there and came back to Shareef’s with the shed keys, of course after having locked it. This was done to make sure that quite a sizeable number of students remain in the university.
Then the students (led by MSF, PSF and IJT guys) gathered in front of the VC’s office and demanded that Shareef be punished. Absolutely absurd, Shareef was nowhere to be seen, VC was no “kotwaal” but they did it anyway. In the meantime an islami guy went to a nearby madrassah and came back with a fatwa and a bunch of Mullahs with bulging bellies that proclaimed death for Shareef. So within one hour of “the blasphemy” the campus was full of mullah mowlana type of guys demanding death penalty for “Shareef the photocopy king” and MSF/PSF guys trying to plot the downfall of VC. Promptly the seizure of all academic activities was communicated to the students by a joint “Action” committee for the defence of the honour of the prophet; meaning that there would be no exam the next day.
This bringing out the things in a new light.

In the meantime, Bugti came to me. Now who is Bugti? Bugti, my friends, as the name belies, was a Baloch guy in this Punjabi university. Extremely fond of getting into fights, Bugti had a villain inside him, which he had successfully hidden from the world for the fear of VC. Now that it seemed that VC’s days were numbered, Bugti decided to show his true colours. Bugti and I, in fact, were part of a formidable group of eight with no political inclinations whatsoever. Whether or not they liked it, survival instinct obliged students to form groups since individuals without groups were forced to join one of the political parties. Ours was one such self-preservation kind of group, but all this self-preservation crap was going to be thrown out of the window in a few minutes time. A group meeting was hastily called to decide the course of action as there was no exam the next day and the university was in a state of chaos, while the action committee was drafting up students for a grand demonstration. What followed during the next few hours under the courageous leadership of Bugti is “the real stuff” in this account.

Bugti, first of all, like the tactician that he was, decided to play the “element of surprise” card. One of the strategic assumptions made by him was that the “Puraana Daur” is back. “Puraana Daur” signified the old times when students, backed by corrupt local politicians, walked on campus brandishing guns, acting like mafia guys. He hypothesized that sooner or later, one of the older gangsters was going to attack one of the university canteens for extortion money, so why not us? Moreover, if we were going to do that, why not milk the fattest cow, the biggest canteen that is.

So dear fellows, we went to the biggest and the busiest canteen in the university. It was an hour past the lunch-time but as the islami guys had already locked university buses in the university shed, there was more than usual rush. Bugti had assured us that we would have to do nothing, he would do the talking, we just had to be there. That, that extortion thing would turn out to be so easy, so smooth and so sweet: I had never imagined. The poor cashier cringed with fear and awe when Bugti demanded the money, in fact Bugti demanded him to empty the cash box and when he showed his hesitation, inside a big hall full of people having their lunch Bugti slapped him straight on the face and said out loudly, “Jaantay nahin ho? Puraana daur waapis aa gaya hay!!!( Don’t you know? The old times are back.)”. The hall fell silent. Most of them were day-scholars, they had nothing to do with politics or grouping or extortion or fights. They lived with their mummies and daddies, university was like school to them. They came to study, arriving in time, taking classes regularly, making notes and all the stuff. They were “shehri baboos”. None of them dared leave their place. Bugti collected the money and all of us came out of the canteen. Back in the hostel we counted the money, it was a little more than seven thousand rupees. Now what to do with it?

Meanwhile the blasphemy front was getting hotter by the hour. The new front of mullah mowlana group, PSF/MSF and IJT went, of course in the form of a procession, to the nearest police station to register an FIR against Shareef under the anti-blasphemy laws. VC, however, had already alerted the S.H.O. and in fact had ordered him not to register any complaint whatsoever. Those of you who underestimate the powers of a retired General in Pakistan, get your records and minds straight. The army runs the show in “mumlikat”. The united action committee of thugs opened a new agitation front in front of the police post calling reserves from various madrassahs mushroomed over the city. In the meantime, after quite a heated debate in our group’s operational headquarters, which by the way was my room, it was decided that the extortion money would be used to see a “mujra” that very night. There were those who were suggesting that we should pool another seven thousand and buy a second-hand motorcycle for the group.
That would make it four motorcycles for eight persons and we won’t have to do “triple sawaree” anymore. This motion was rejected however. Anyway, what good is a second hand motorcycle, compared to a “mujra”.

Sadly my buddies, there was no GEO TV at that time, so the news took quite some time to spread around the city. But blocking of the G.T. Road and shutting down of university bus services was no small thing. By 6 o’clock the university was buzzing with media persons, most of them newspaper reporters. We left the university at about 8 o’clock for Lakshmi chowk. Bugti knew a pimp and that pimp had promised two girls for a mujra show of about two hours. We had a meeting with the pimp and the dancers at about 11 o’clock in Iqbal town. After having a good traditional dinner at Lakshmi we arrived at our pre-designated place at about 11o’clock. The show began with sizzling Punjabi numbers and new Indian remixes. The girls however were not pretty. One of them was outright ugly and other was very lean and had an Arnold Schwarzenegger type of voice.

The show was only thirty minutes old when suddenly four or five men barged in the room. My first thought was that perhaps that was a police raid but it wasn’t. It had so happened that due to tension with India quite a lot of army personnel were deployed at the border. The girls had performed the previous night for a Major sahib but the Major wanted something more than dance. The pimp had demanded an outrageous amount of money, at least in Major sahib’s opinion and Major had went back to barracks or whatever they call their dugouts empty-handed (strictly symbolically speaking).

Tonight, he had come back with his buddies to take the girl with him, without the money that is. He was going to extort that pimp and those girls , just like we had a few hours ago extorted money from the canteen guys. Just the slight change that the would be getting sex in place of money (Which by the way raises another interesting question. In the moral context of the thing, Can a prostitute be raped?). Perhaps Major had also understood that with the arrival of Musharraf and ouster of an elected government(I hate to call it elected buddies but at least on paper that was an elected government) his “Puraana Daur” was back. So he ordered the girl to get properly dressed and come with him. Now dear fellows, this Bugti guy was a strange guy. Not four or five hours ago, he had almost looted a cafeteria, but this Major sahib and his swagger was starting to get on his nerves.

So he got up and coming between major and the girl, said in a voice dripping with conviction, that the girl would not go and if the Major wanted to take her with him, he could try to do it the hard way. We were students, small time crooks. We were not there to fight for the rights of prostitutes. We in fact had no right to be there, enjoying mujras with loot money but Bugti was our leader. So with him stood all of us. Now we were eight, they were four. Numerical advantage my friends, as has been proved time and again, is the key to win a war. Major sahib backed out and left the house. Perhaps, perhaps, had two or three mummy daddy burgers, having their lunch in the shitty university cafeteria stood up to confront us, we would have also backed out but nobody did and we did what we wanted. The mere hinting of renaissance of “Puraana Daur” was enough to freeze them in their steps. We continued with our mujra session and left at about two o’clock in the morning. Bugti was happy. We were happy.

Now that I look at the state of affairs in Pakistan, where “Puraana Daur” is in full swing these days, I wonder what Bugti would be doing because nobody seems to have the guts to stand up to these Major sahibs. All of us, you my dear reader and I the “raconteur” only talk the talk, but Bugti, he sure proved that he could walk the walk.