I hate work

i hate work
i hate working
it stops socializing
it stifles relationships
it is boring and monotonous
it is unrewarding


i hate work
i hate working
it is humiliating
it is slavish
it is unhealthy
it is lame

i hate work
i hate working
work is meant for donkeys
work is meant for geeks
work is meant for retards
no wonder work is prescribed in penitentiaries


i hate work
i hate working
i'd rather be playing
i'd rather be idolizing
i'd rather be chatting
i'd rather be not working


i hate work
i hate working
as I sit here wondering
and looking eagerly to my next toilet break
and then they wonder why so many people smoke?

October 1983, suicide bomb on UN Beirut barracks.

'I believe that among the many surprises that came out of the war in Lebanon, the most dangerous is that the war let the Shi'ites out of the bottle. No one predicted that but if as a result we replace Palestine Liberation Organisation terrorism in Southern Lebanon with Shi'ite terrorism, we have done the worst thing in our struggle against terrorism. In twenty years of PL0 terrorism, no one PLO terrorist ever made himself into a live bomb.'

Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's defence minister in Feburary 1985.

Death of Ibn Taymiyya

Ibn Taymiyya died after an illness in September 1328. His affiliation to the Qadiriyya mystical order then earned him burial in the capital's Sufi cemetery. That was an ironic twist - and what followed was a cosmic joke. Tens of thousands of people jostled for a view of his shrouded body. His personal effects were in such demand that bidders for his lice-killing camphor necklace pushed its price up to 150 dirhams; his skullcap fetched a full 500. A few eager mourners even got to drink the water used for bathing his corpse. And once underground, the erstwhile scourge of tomb visitors was destined to receive pilgrims and sightseers for another six centuries.

Excerpt from Heave on Earth by Sadakat Kadri

Abu al-Hasan and God

A well conveyed by a story Sufis told about an eleventh-century mystic, whose prayers had once been interrupted by a familiar voice. 'Oh, Abu al-Hasan!' God had boomed. 'Do you want me to tell people what I know about your sins, so that they stone you to death?'
'Oh, Lord,' he had whispered back.
'Do you want me to tell people what I know about your mercy, so that none will ever feel obliged to bow down to you again?'
'Keep your secret,' came God's conspiratorial reply. 'And I will keep mine.'

Excerpt from Heaven on Earth by Sadakat Kadri.

Putin and Chechnya

At a press conference, a reporter for the French Newspaper Le Monde asked a question about the use of heavy artillery against the civilians in Chechnya. Putin looking calm and even smiling slightly with the corners of his mouth, said, 'If you are ready to become a radical adherent of Islam and you are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to come to Moscow. We are a country of many faiths. We have specialists in this. I will recommend that the operation be preformed in such a way that nothing will ever grow there again.'

Excerpt from A man without a face by Masha Gessen.

Russian matchmaker and the tailor's daughter

A matchmaker calls on an aging tailor to discuss the possibility of arranging his middle daughter’s marriage to the heir to the Rothschild empire. The tailor puts up several objections: he has no business marrying off his middle daughter before the older ones have found a match, he does not want his daughter to move far from home, he is not so sure the Rothschilds are as pious as his daughter’s husband ought to be. The matchmaker counters each argument with his own: this is, after all, the heir to the Rothschild fortune. Finally, the old tailor relents. “Excellent,” says the matchmaker. "Now all I have to do is talk to the Rothschilds."

Tenth December, 1971

On the 10th of December 1971, at Jamalpur, near Dhaka, East Pakistan an Indian brigadier, Hardit Singh Kler, surrounded a Pakistani unit led by Lt. Colonel Ahmed Sultan. The two officers exchanged letters on the fateful day. The first, written by the Indian brigadier, was taken across the front line by an elderly man who delivered it by hand.

To,
The Commander Jamalpur Garrison
1 am directed to inform you that your garrison has been cut off from all sides and you have no escape route available to you. One brigade with full compliment of artillery has already been built up and another will be striking by morning. In addition you have been given a foretaste of a small element of our air force with a lot more to come. The situation as far as you are concerned is hopeless. Your higher commanders have already ditched you. I expect your reply before 6.30 p.m. today failing which I will be constrained to deliver the final blow for which purpose 40 sorties of MIGs have been allotted to me. In this morning's action the prisoners captured by us have given your strength and dispositions, and are well looked after.
The treatment I expect to be given to the civil messenger should be according to a gentlemanly code of honour and no harm should come to him.

An immediate reply is solicited.

Brigadier HS Kler. Comd.

The reply was sent a few hours later:

Dear Brig,
Hope this finds you in high spirits. Your letter asking us to surrender had been received. I want to tell you that the fighting you have seen so far is very little, in fact the fighting has not even started.
So let us stop negotiating and start the fight. 40 sorties, I may point out, are inadequate. Ask for many more.
Your point about treating your messenger well was superfluous. It shows how you under-estimate my boys. I hope he liked his tea. Give my love to the Muktis. Let me see you with a sten in your hands next time instead of the pen you seem to have such mastery over.

Now get on and fight.

Yours sincerely
Commander Jamalpur Fortress.
(Lt. Colonel Ahmed Sultan)

The next morning the fight did indeed begin when Lt. Colonel Sultan tried to break out of his garrison. Over 230 of his men were killed.
They died in vain. When the Indian brigadier had written 'your higher commanders have already ditched you', he was absolutely right. The military and political leadership in Dhaka already knew that the war was lost.


Excerpts from Pakistan, eye of the storm by Owen Bennet Jones.

The dervish and his BMW.

A dervish was leading a simple life in Paris. He did not really have personal
possessions, except for a BMW motorcycle. He was very happy with his BMW.
One day it so happened that he returned to the parking garage where he had left his BMW and saw that it was gone. He immediately started to reflect on it. He tried to see it as a test. He thought to himself: "Does it really
matter that I no longer have got it? Can I live without it?" He then realized that he did not mind at all and could live without his BMW. A minute or two later on he suddenly realized that he was standing on the wrong floor of the parking garage and he found his BMW easily by going to the correct floor.

Pakistanis, the most critical nation in the world

In the preface of Owen Bennet Jones 'Pakistan, eye of the storm.'

Pakistan is an easy place for a journalist to work. Most Pakistanis, from policemen to politicians, shopkeepers to soldiers, love to talk about politics.Admittedly, the more they know the less willing to speak on the record but nevertheless Pakistan remains a very open country. Indeed, Pakistan's willingness to tolerate the scrutiny of local and foreign journalists is one of the reasons it has an image problem. Countries such as Saudi Arabia manage to avoid hostile media coverage simply by refusing to grant journalists sufficient access to do their work.
My first thanks, then, are to the many Pakistanis who were so willing to share their views with a foreign visitor........

More evidence on how critical Pakistanis are....

Excerpt from Breaking the curfew by Emma Duncan

Page 6, paperback edition

More than anywhere I have been -- much more than India -- its people (Pakistani) worry about the state of their country. They wonder what went wrong; they fear for the future. They condemn it; they pray for it. They are involved in the nation's public life as passionately as their small private dilemmas.  I did a small experiment with an English friend who does not believe that politics matters much to people.

A chatty hotel waiter sat down with us to share a bottle of local whisky.  My friend asked him question about his family; I about the dead president. I won hands down. My friend got monosyllabic answers, and I got florid, threatening images of the vengeance which mistreated children wreak on a dictatorial father.
 To a political journalist, a politicised country is thrilling. You begin to believe that what you are writing about matters not just to small coterie of heavy-lunching politicians and journalists but to everybody who lives there.
 If the rest of the world didn't care, that would begin to be depressing. But Pakistan gets headlines because It is at the centre of some of the world's biggest uncertainties, involved in them as an actor and a potential victim.....