The Varied Faces of the Year 2005
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

In good old days, prior to the ban on the screening of Indian movies in Pakistan, there used to be a picture house in Rawalpindi, called Rose (Nigar) Cinema. Though housed in a dilapidated building, it was well known for screening classic, old Indian movies. Sometime in the year 1962, I vividly remember an evening at the Rose for three distinct things: one watching Ashoke Kumar’s QISMAT. Second my impending B.A. examination and I watching a depressing movie; and third, an old man sitting next to me who would initially resort to muffled sobbing, and then to a non-stop crying to my great annoyance at the very start of the movie. I felt constrained to get hold of him during the interval and ask him, “ Buzargo, it is just a movie, a sad one no doubt, but not so much that a man of your mature age should give himself to baby-like crying”.
Even after 46 years, I remember what he said in reply. “Buchay, son, who says I am watching the movie. I was a well-off businessman in Bombay during the Second World War, and this movie, Qismat, I watched twice with my family there. The Indians butchered my wife and my son in 1947, and Pakistan refused to accept my assets’ claim. The movie transports me back to those happy days of my life. Ashok and Mumtaz Shantie in the movie are still the same, but I am not. And the triggering point in the movie for me is that hawker-boy, reading aloud the headlines of the newspaper. The entire building in the background that you might not have noticed, once belonged to me. Now I am an utter destitute. The movie is a three-hour re-live experience for me. I feel my wife sitting by my side, and I hear my son pointing at the hawker-boy, and saying; ‘Look baba, that is our building’ ”.
The parting year 2005 leaves many of us, like the nameless old man I once met, sitting on the heaps of debris, and hearing voices of those dear-ones who, now, lie buried underneath, and we still seeing with mental-eyes those faces that once looked at us with wondrous eyes. (I see clearly the Rawalakot Degree College where I started my teaching career in August 1968, now leveled to the ground by the earthquake). The year 2005, like a fashionable and freakish host, in Shakespeare’s words, “Slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, and with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing”. Alas, in the year 2005, neither its advent had been a healthy welcome filled with smiles, nor is its exit.
The Observer, in a light vein, writes that the year 2005 will be remembered for the disappearance of the VHS, driven off the market by DVD, thus making this year as VH1’s most watched year in its 20-year history. The network posted 16% increase in total viewers compared to 2004’s. Who cares? Some call it the year of cellular phones. Another called it the year of Google and Amazon.com. Whatever… A South African newspaper blurted. The year 2005 will undoubtedly be remembered for economic hardships, and most South-Asians subscribe to this view. Financial stringencies have turned virtually every citizen, in that part of the world to an economic analyst. Most agree that the year 2005 will be remembered as the year of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and in case Nature rested after playing havoc, then of man-made disasters, (London blasts, Iraq blasts, Karachi blasts, Delhi market blasts, to name a few).
There was no welcome smile when the year 2005 announced its arrival. In fact, it found millions picking up the pieces from one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history, the work of December 26, 2004 the Andaman Sea tsunami. Banda Aceh, in Indonesia was among the worst hit places by this disaster. In the words of Kuwayama, “It was beyond destroyed, it was annihilated, with ruins extending as far as the human eye could see”. Some 216,000 people were found dead or missing in some 11 countries. The Economist opined that natural disasters could not be bigger and deadlier than this. But, no. What more, and far deadlier demolishing devices Nature carried in its womb, ready to be delivered was seen on October 8, 2005, (the October earthquake that now is described as the, “Tsunami in the mountains”). The damage it caused was so severe that photographer Teru Kuwayama felt compelled to write, “I found myself almost sleepwalking through the wreckage”. Some 85,000 perished, three and a half million or more became homeless, and tens of thousands still remain stranded, waiting for an impending death due to the advent of a brutal winter.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, (NOAA), the year 2005 can pride itself for having given to the world a record-breaking hurricane season, (26 storms and un-precedented 14 hurricanes, of which 7 were major hurricanes, and 3 of them of category 5 storms with sustained winds of 156 miles per hour or more (Katrina, Rita, and Wilma), till they ran short of names); it also had been a year of blistering heat waves, lingering drought and a crippling Northeast blizzard.
Even its ending doesn’t appear to be portending well. It is closing to the all-time high global annual average temperature. Based on the preliminary data, the year 2005, will likely be 1.0 F above the 1895-2004 mean, which will make 2005 one of the 20 warmest years on record for the country.
Some tend to classify the year 2005 as the year of the consequences… the year in which we reaped a bumper crop of misfortunes and disasters, the seeds of which we had planted ourselves in the form of our own tainted policies. With the exception of China and India, few countries can feel complacent about how they fared in the year 2005. President Bush had optimistically mapped out his strategy for the year 2005 in which he had jubilantly told the reporters, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it”. He also had specified his goals: Social Security, tax reform, the economy, education and the war on terror. According to the Newsweek, Dec. 26, he “lost his first two bets to tough GOP opposition. High gas prices hurt him. And the war in Iraq cost him his shirt. According to Gallup, Bush’s approval ratings on Iraq fell from 47 points after re-election to 32 in September”. And now at 39 points, the upswing can get stalled due to new disclosure that Bush authorized spying on US citizens after 9/11 and the Senate’s wrangling over the renewal of the Patriot Act. All in all the year 2005 had been nightmarish for the President.
Thousands of miles away, President Musharraf also appears to be riding a political storm at the end of the fateful year 2005. He could wait for a few days and let the year 2005 close on a somber and calmer note. He did not. The October 8 earthquake had given the people of Pakistan a mission to rebuild the northern part of the country, till someone whispered in President Musharraf’s ears that it was a God-sent opportunity to pick up from where he had left on the construction of the Kalabagh Dam. The guns had not silenced in Waziristan that they began blurting fire-balls in Kohlu, the capital of Marri tribe in Baluchistan The plate of year 2005 had already been so full that it could not take any more. Kalabagh, no doubt, is the need of the hour, but it should not serve as a springboard for the Baluchi and Sindhi nationalists, helping them to use it for launching Bangladesh-type seceding adventures. “Consensus or no consensus, Kalabagh Dam will be built”, a statement by the President has sent a wrong signal to those who are sworn to oppose him, and even to those who like the MQM, and some of the Federal Ministers, are there as fair-weather friends, to enjoy the benefits, but are not willing to risk losing their voting bank on this issue. Whatever good the President and his PM, (exclusive of some of his ministers) had achieved got washed away, first by the earthquake, and now by the Kalabagh issue. The nation stands beaten by Nature as well as by its politicians and Sardars at the end of the year 2005.
The year 2005 also presented to the world some of the worst racially motivated scenes. Tensions between the white and Muslim youths broke out in violence in Sydney, Australia. France also remained wrapped in riots. Iraq is embroiled in Shia-Sunni civil war, and Pakistan also had not been free of it. Overall, it should not be hard to picture the faces of the year 2005. Except for two faces, and both from India, one hardly sees any other face with a smile on it. One is that of Amitabh Bachchan. He definitely had been “Muqaddar Ka Sikandar” in the year 2005. He raked money till he too fell. Even at 63, he acted in 13 movies and generated revenue of over Rs.1 billion. He not only paid back his debt of 90 crore, (900 million), but also pocketed a good, few crores for his rainy days. What though the health is lost, all is not lost: the unconquerable will… to make money. The second face had been that of benign and gentle, Manmohan Singh. He remained unscathed by the year 2005, at least not in any mentionable way.
Like the end of year 2004, the last days of the year 2005 are also casting lengthening shadows on the year 2006. There are mixed signals of hope and despair for the new year. The new discoveries of eavesdropping show that 47% of adults now fear of losing privacy to Homeland Security laws… a bad news. The new elections in Iraq and Afghanistan hint that 71% of Iraqis now think that they are happy with their personal lives and 60% believe things will get better in 2006. … a good news. With 34-37% increase in gas prices, 37% of adults now worry they would not be able to pay their heating bills because of energy costs, and 7% of Americans have already stopped taking their prescription pills to save money. … a bad news. 83% of Americans contributed to a charity in the past 12 months, and 64% of them believe that religion is under attack… a sense of compassion staying healthy and alive is a good news. However, it is a bad news that 56% of travelers now believe that terrorism is their top travel concern, and 16% of them include hurricanes in their list of apprehensions as their major concerns too, which is not good news. A good percentage of people regard the Avian Flu, and the fear of the outbreak of a pandemic a greater threat than the threat of terrorism. Living under constant fear is not good news.
The familiar faces of the year 2005 are not hard to visualize; the faces of northern Pakistan and Kashmir, of New Orleans, Sri Lanka and northern Sumatra; the face of a North African teenager in Paris; the face of Cindy Sheehan and Patrick Fitzgerald and of Arthur Miller (man is not a piece of fruit. You eat the orange and throw the peel away, as he wrote in Death of a Salesman); the face of a drill bit on an oil rig; the faces of peasants looking for wood to cut for cooking fires; the face of an African doctor walking to see villagers with AIDS; the faces of Americans and Europeans flying helicopters in foggy mountains of Kashmir and digging out the dead and the wounded after the earthquake; the face of Safida Bibi who astounded the world by staying alive even after staying buried for 64 days. These are the faces of hope and hopefully of a happier new year.


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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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