Pakistan: Auditioning A New Sport

Suddenly due to the lack of anything mildly related to cricket in our near future (our tour in England was considered a 'Home Series'), it appears that we now have a gargantuan amount of free time on our hands.

In order to recover from the obvious emotional and yes physical turmoil of the scandal, I feel that is is imperative that we decisively reallocate our inherent obsessive sporting fanaticism to a new sport to obsess over, with rampant unemployment, power outages and now floods, it's not like we have much to occupy our time. The question is what?

Kabaddi: Men grabbing other men in a mud pit.....(Insert Pathan Joke Here)

Verdict: We'll Pass; Something about watching a sport that focuses on fat semi-nude men is lacks appeal unless (insert Pathan Joke Here). I'll completely support any female variation of the sport, though I think a jello pool would make it far more watchable. Women's rights and all that.

Wrestling: Muscular men scampering around in their fashion forward tighty whitey's, somersaulting from awkward angles and pretending to get hurt. We would however, excel in the bravado and blustering aspect of the sport.....oops, it's not allowed to be called that anymore.

Verdict: We'll pass. Apparently a Chammaaat doesn't qualify as a finishing move and evidently Pakistani' Athletes make awful liars. That and the Indian born great Kali is rather scary chap. 

Racing: We are a nation that loves to race our cars, motorbikes, rickshaws and ghudda garis (donkey carts). On the face of it, the sport speaks to our souls, with it's shady rules, loose morals and hypocrisy. 

Verdict: We'll Pass. We can't afford the insurance or technical infrastructure required, besides Petrol is expensive yaar!

Polo: Involves riding a horse, and hitting a ball with a large stick, on the face of it this appears like a worthy successor to cricket, particularly with the advantage of a horse doing all the work, whilst we merely chill on a saddle and swat our sticks around.

Verdict: We'll Pass: We're not Mongols, roaming around on horseback really isn't our thing. 

Surfing: With the advent of the floods, it is a sport that we could see a strong mix of participants both from the ocean dwellers; AKA Karachi.

Verdict: We'll Pass: As nice as it would be to have a Karachi dominated sport, we're rather scared of sharks.

Boxing: A great sport that a Muslim, Muhammad Ali actually has dominated. So there is a sense of legacy in picking up the mantle and beating the Allah right into the infidel (if they don't agree with us, they're all infidels).

Verdict: We'll Pass: we greatly treasure our fabulous good looks. Besides, something distinctly Un-Islamic about punching another Muslim. Boxing matches with the Kaffirs on the other hand.....

Tennis: A passionate sport, which quite frankly the average Pakisani cares little about. Sorry Aisam Ul Haq Note: Pakistani Tennis 'Champion' Aisam Ul Haq....a rather nice boy who likes to play with Indians because no one else likes him enough to play with him.

Verdict: We'll Pass, There is far too much running involved. Unless Shoaib Malik decides to team up with Sania Mirza, then we'll re visit the issue. 

Golf: Haha, Just kidding. 

Rugby: A Manly sport complete with a suicidal lack of body Armour and padding, that involves hustling through a field with opponents having rather demon like characteristics.

Verdict: We'll Pass; It goes against our religious principles to fight with Demons. 

Dance Dance Revolution: Our wedding culture oriented showcases have already developed an envious array of already trained talent to excel in this vicious dangerous sport.....

Verdict: We'll Pass, we don't need another Punjabi dominated team. Besides, we don't put put our women on display. 

Hockey: Former World Champions, now we humiliate ourselves when ever we play.....

Verdict: We'll Pass, don't be silly, we suck at Hockey, the only hockey sticks Pakistani's generally own are used for um...other purposes that would come under the category of self defense. 

Squash: A sport steeped in the legacy of both Jansher and Jehangir Khan. Ever since then we've let it fizzle out....because we don't actually care.

Verdict: We'll Pass; we barely liked it when we dominated it.

Football/Soccer: The beautiful game, a sport where everyone already makes so much money that Match Fixing is out of the question and the idea of Performance adjusting borders on wishful thinking. We can however alter the performance of the Football world by restricting our exports of top quality footballs to the world.

Verdict: We'll .....be Perfect at it! Now all we have to do is find folks who play the game as ardently as we'll be watching it. In order to speed up the process let's throw some money at some Brazilian Street urchins. 

We are all looking for the Perfect Pakistani sport, a sport whose representatives will make us proud of our sporting culture. The truth is that our athletes' talents, morals and deficiencies all reflect what is in every Pakistani, including the artful hypocrisy.

Until we choose to be different, they won't be either. Cricket may well yet be our future, but the fault isn't in the sport. It's in every single one of us, we just choose to ignore it.

Maybe all we need to do is hire some mildly attractive girls to be interested in the sport and we can create a following. Sure worked for Beach Volleyball.

A version of this piece was published at Dawn.com

Career Day: Politicians

Why Become a Politician?....because LOL... it's like Freaking AWESOME!!! 

Becoming a politican is a terrific civic minded thing to do, by deciding devote one's life to public service, one (mostly land owning men) get to shape the destiny of our country. Plus you get flithy swim in a vat of steaming gold & wipe your ass with USD 100 dollar bills (Pak rupee depreciates far too much) rich.

Women have a significant number of reserved seat in the national and provincial assemblies, they don't seem to have the influence to go with it. Because the truth of the matter is women MNA's are picked by Men. 

Minister or MNA, most people can't tell differentiate . Just because a car has a tacky MNA emblem emblazoned accross the licencse plate doesn't mean that they are a sitting minister. Though I do wonder, that if an MNA car is involved in a hit and run, how exactly do you explain that.....after all.....which MNA? There are hundreds and they seem permanent ensconced in the major cities. In fact some have body doubles and chill in all of them.

The beauty about male politicans is that they don't really have to be the politican. Here comes the MNA....well, he's actually not the MNA, but his wife is...so you can say he is the real MNA. To be fair, in Argentina after their President stepped down, his wife was elected President. My Hero. 

As a political stalwart you get to drive on the lyari expressway and talk about how your hard work had a vital role in building it and without your support that this would never have come into being. Ofcourse this discounts the fact that the express way has been shut down for the day...but who gives a shit about the commoners....blue bloods all the way!

Awesome bandookh brandishing body guard, it's every guys dream to be a hero, but to have your own personal blackwater style army. How freaking awesome is that....and since we have testosterome control issues, we are completely capable of finding new conflicts with which to use them...So we can't pick fights with the other political parties because we don't want the military stepping in, dissolving parliament and subsequently kicking our asses....we can't fight with the military since they have alot more guns...and nukes than we do....so maybe we can pick a fight with those rural bandits...or terrorists....or whatever the US decides to call them this week.

Babes Babes Babes. One cannot say a man chooses politics because of hot women MNA , even though there are a few, and they seem pretty subservient . Women are suckers for power. Don't worry, men are suckers for hot girls. So it works out. This whole navigating a corporate life in order to get the car, the house, the ladies and the big fat bank account is much more efficiently achieved by going into politics.

Loose morals are a plus, in politics you don't have to be squeeky clean (infact it is an utterly devastating disadvantage).

All you need is: Land, Land, Land and friends in Politics...blood relations already in politics is an added bonus. If no land is present, pretend you do, go to a far flung bit of Pakistan and announce yourself as their savour, promise to bring them the world's biggest mosque (because the town's 38 people really can't keep using that verandah anymore), build huge dams, have massive subsidies, free food & water etc  and also claim to be related to the most influential person their, if they don't buy it, then wed that guy's daughter (note: do not forget to leave her there...afterall, moving away from home is very traumatic and you wouldn't want that for your jaanuman) or just marry the Quran 4 times if (she's really really....really ugly and if) you can swing it.

Politicians look really powerful and important, but the truth is that cumulatively, other than attending parties at the Marriott, show boating on TV and occasionally showing up the assembly to lambast the opposition, there isn't a whole lot to do. Though i'm sure that they get really sweet business cards that probably disintegrate whenever a government is dissolved (our printing costs must be insane).

So to all of you nice unemployed folk out their, do us all a favor and adjust your career path to Politics! It's rewarding even though you may never reach heaven.