hai re hai tera ghoongTa. . . .

This question has been on my mind for a while now, but I have usually just let it go because of freedom of choice and all that. But one thing has bothered me about Benazir Bhutto. Why does she insist on covering her head with a dupaTTa when she does not even cover it all the way. Ye koi fashion statement hai re?

It reminds me of some of the PIA flight attendants, you know, or the women on the early evening news who used to cover their heads halfway, enough to chupao the big round ball of hair on top of their head, but of course the rest of their silky black hair was there for us to see.

I don't know. I guess one is free to wear their dupaTTas as they please, their cuffs on their shalwars a certain width, as long as it does not interfere with the affairs of the state. But there is something about how Benazir wears her chunari chunari that speaks to how she has run (or not) the country, or what we can look forward to, if she returns. It looks ridiculous, quite frankly, just as ridiculous as her showing off her Mills & Boon library to the press, to see her on television spouting off her when I was Prime Minister, and seeing how at certain moments she only wears her chunari halfway, and others she wears it close enough.

I still remember this interview for a Western magazine where the interviewer asked Benazir where she leaned in terms of her politics, and she said she was a little more left of center, but that could change after her visit to the United States. I think it was at that time that I seriously began to question her commitment and her consistency, just as we question Musharraf's now. Was she becoming the leader of Pakistan to follow Amreeka's beck and call, or was she committed to listening to her own people, to negotiating the storms within her own country. Her country. One perhaps she knows just as little about as I do, having been away from it.

I get it, I do get it that it is not easy being a woman in Pakistan, let alone a woman leader. But it can be done. It just has to be done properly. You do not go to a poor person's home bedecked in gehnay and tell them you know and understand their pain, because you do not. You may have been arrested, and in solitary confinement as a political prisoner, but that still does not change the fact that in the eyes of more than a few you are a person of privilege who cannot identify with someone who can barely afford sustenance for her family.

Members of my family including myself, were huge PPP supporters, even after we left Pakistan. Some Christians still say that at least when Bhutto was the head of state, they did much better than in the years that followed. Whether that is true or not, Bhutto is dead. And his daughter is not him, nor should she continue to ride on when my father was Prime Minister.

I think Benazir should lose the dupaTTa, on her head at least, or be more sincere in her quest to continue wearing it. The Jamaat-e-Islaami has already made it crystal clear that it wants to be part of Pakistan's policymaking. Any leader is going to have to find a way to negotiate with the JI. Not expel them or pulverize them, or even mollycoddle them. When BB comes on the news, it sounds like she is saying more of what the Western media wants to hear, rather than telling it like it is. And more than a few Pakistanis have had enough of their politicians and leaders being more concerned with pleasing the likes of the Saudis, or the Amreekans, or themselves. That is something Benazir Bhutto-Zardari with her half-covered head needs to keep in mind before and if she returns to Pakistan.