Tonight in Islamabad
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
After being hammered hard at work with multiple projects and repeatedly abused by the site manager, I went back home tired, to rest, in peace, to eat a big meal, take a small nap and to ultimately spend some ‘quality’ time watching my Pakistani news channels for tranquility to eventually ‘calm’ my nerves. All day long, I had missed the action, not knowing what was happening in the country; unaware of the latest minute-to-minute updates; I was living in the dark during those busy hours. I had specially felt bad for my inability to follow an enormously important street protest in Kharian (the 31st biggest city of Punjab) where a ‘huge’ rally in favor of the rights of the barbers was going to be held. Equally disappointed with myself again, I was ignorant about the daily progress of the 22nd week of the Bollywood star’s third pregnancy. I could not catch the morning news about her weekly workout schedule. I did not know if she was still nauseous in her second trimester, or if her abdominal girth had increased in the last few days, or if the doctors had revealed the gender of her baby yet; or if she had picked his/her name.
In short, today was the day of my extreme oblivion; my lack of information on these recent developments had driven me bananas and I had felt completely out of touch with the geo-political and social affairs of national significance (barbers on strike in Kharian) along with the history of contemporary arts (pregnancy updates of the artists). For that reason, I was planning to get at least a four-hour long straight session with the news channels tonight. Nevertheless, let me first confess something just as important to you that you may have already guessed: I was going through withdrawal from the adrenaline rush that I normally get by watching these television programs. In a weird way, unconsciously though, I think I have been addicted to the 24-hour news channels. I like their never-ending breaking news process; I admire their unnecessary updates; I enjoy the boring commercials and above all, I love their unprofessional anchors. Lately, my mind also has developed a great deal of tolerance and psychological dependence on their sensationalism, as it has started to crave for more and more gruesome and grotesque updates every hour. These nauseating and horrifying broadcasts are pivotal for me to go to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night with some extra dose of nightmares or to develop a resistant insomnia where I am not able to fall asleep at all, even after popping five Valiums.
Therefore, when I turned on my television, my hands trembled and my heart raced with excitement as if I was a young girl electrified to get her favorite Barbie. Secretly, I wanted to know the worst possible incidents of the day, the calamities, the fires, the earthquakes, the suffering, the pain and the injustices, all of them in one night. I did not have to wait long and after just five minutes, the channel ran its first ‘Breaking News’ while interrupting its own primetime news: “A ten-year-old girl has run away with her ‘boyfriend’, 40-year-old Irfan who was her father’s friend. Considering their ‘mutual interest’, the girl’s father has agreed to get them married if both of them come home safely.” (Translation: A 10-year-old girl has been abducted by a 40-year-old man named Irfan. The poor girl’s father is pleading directly to the perpetrator to kindly bring his daughter back home alive. No further questions will be asked.)
Nauseous, but I felt better after listening to this bizarre presentation of a kidnapped young girl. It was a reasonable start for me, so I flipped to the next channel to check out some real stuff: “A woman has been caught by the police for cooking the remains of her ex-husband who had gone missing a few days ago.”
Now, like a fish in the water I was feeling much better, really nauseous and about to throw up. I changed the channel once again: “22 unknown people were killed by unknown gunmen in an unknown town of Balochistan near an unknown Iranian border.” After that news, I felt 100 percent relieved because I had actually puked. Firstly, it was on the loss of fellow countrymen; second on them being categorized as ‘unknown’ while everyone knew they were Shiites killed by the banned Sunni jihadi groups near Quetta, and lastly on the absence of any follow-up sessions on this issue for days till there would be another massacre in Chilas.
At that time, my appetite for creepy updates was completely satisfied. I was actually looking for some good news. After just 30 minutes of channel surfing, I found one easily. “The crime investigation has made some real progress. The criminals will soon be caught and justice would reach the doorsteps of the victims. They would get their stolen articles back very soon and the bicycles that they lost 10 years ago would be returned to them safely in less than a year.”
After the good news, I looked for humor and a genuine reason to laugh, and again I was not disappointed: “It was the president. We only obeyed the orders, as always. We were unaware of the corruption charges against the civilian rulers. We never meant to get involved in politics.”
Disclaimer: the above story is a piece of fiction. Any resemblance to the characters, places or incidence is by chance only. It is not the intention of the author to malign the electronic media because he does not watch television at all.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
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