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KARACHI: Pakistan’s fashion week was to kick off with an opulent opening ceremony on Wednesday Nov 4, 2009, against a backdrop of militant violence and security fears that delayed the event and kept away foreign glitterati.

Models will sashay down catwalks for four days, flaunting the latest creations by local designers in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation, where most women cover up and observe varying degrees of Islamic dress.

‘Our fashion week starts today and will continue till Saturday,’ said Tehmina Khaled, spokeswoman of Fashion Pakistan, which organises the event.

‘The situation was so painful in the country that we postponed it for three weeks,’ she told AFP, referring to a spate of deadly attacks blamed on Taliban militants in which more than 340 people died in October and November.

Extremism has plagued Pakistan for years. The latest surge in violence has been blamed on militants avenging the US killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and a Pakistani offensive in the northwest.

Fashion Week organisers, however, were determined that the show must go on in Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, where the luxury Marriott Hotel is hosting the launch under stringent security.

‘We have been maintaining strict security measures in the area but have intensified them for this event,’ police official Ahsan Zulfiqar told AFP.

The fashion event – originally scheduled for October – planned to introduce designers and models from abroad, but the fragile security situation has left organisers counting on local talent.

‘We have 32 designers from across the country who will participate in the event,’ Khaled said. ‘There is no designer or model coming from abroad due to security reasons.’

Karachi is the cosmopolitan hub of Pakistan, complete with glitzy shopping malls and a thriving cafe culture. But it has not escaped the shadow of Taliban violence, militant cells are believed to operate in the city of 14 million, where the profits from crime and kidnappings allegedly bankroll the insurgency in the northwest.–AFP.

KARACHI: After wheat, sugar, gas and power shortages, the country is now facing shortage of yarn, a basic raw material for value-added textile sector, and there is an increase in cotton yarn prices.

Minister for textile industry Rana Farooq Khan on Wednesday convened a meeting of stakeholders, including value-added sector and spinners to resolve the issue.

Sources told Dawn that the spinners took a stiff stand and were of the view that since they have suffered losses during the last three years and have also faced bank defaults, they would not like to miss an opportunity which may help reduce their accumulated liabilities.

Despite efforts by the minister and the secretary of textile, Dr Waqar Masood, both the sides continued to stick to their stand.

They were keen to see that a mechanism is evolved under which export contracts of garments, hosiery, towels, bed-wear and other value-added textiles are not disturbed and are honoured in the world market.

Initially textile sector representatives sought ban on export of cotton and cotton yarn. However, owing to stiff stand taken by the representatives of spinners, they showed some flexibility and were ready to evolve a mechanism which could ensure availability of cotton yarn to domestic industry and exporters, sources said.

Cotton economy for the last 10 years had been operating on the basis of market forces after the then commerce minister, Razak Dawood, allowed duty-free import and export of textile raw material.

A number of suggestions were floated by the value-added sector, including imposition of duty on export on cotton and cotton yarn to those countries which compete with them in the world market.

Other proposals were of fixing ceiling on exports at the level of previous year or giving refinance on local sale of course yarn under 32 counts.

Similarly, it was also suggested that spinners should also be given refinance on export of fine yarn.

However, all these suggestions were turned down by spinners and as a result the meeting remained inconclusive.

Looking at the situation, the sources said the minister was left with no choice but to come up with some administrative measures.

He informed the participants of the meeting that approval would be sought from the Cabinet in Friday’s meeting to take legal action against hoarders and profiteers of cotton yarn.

THE HAGUE: The business of selling food that is halal, or acceptable to Muslims, is set to grow rapidly in Europe in coming years as more supermarket chains target the sector, a Nestle executive said on Tuesday.

Frits van Dijk, executive vice president at the world’s biggest food group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Halal Forum in The Hague he expected the halal food business in Europe to grow by 20 to 25 per cent within the next decade.

The total European halal food market is currently valued at about $66 billion, including meat, fresh food and packed food, while the global market is worth about $634 billion.

‘We are starting to see that these products are not just in speciality shops but are also starting to get into the mainstream of modern retailers,’ said Van Dijk, pointing to Britain’s Tesco and France’s Carrefour, which stock halal goods.

The halal industry is based on a belief that Muslims should eat food and use goods such as cosmetics that are ‘halalan toyibban,’ which means permissible and wholesome.

Milk powder, cooking aids, seasoning and sauces are among the most popular halal products in Europe at the moment, while Nestle has recently started selling a range of meat-based and frozen food halal products in France, Van Dijk said.

Nestle is the world’s leading manufacturer of halal food, selling about 5.3 billion Swiss francs ($5.23 billion) worth of halal food in 2008, about five per cent of its annual revenue.

Its established halal food markets include Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey and Middle Eastern countries, while France, Britain and Germany are emerging as its key halal markets in Europe.

‘Twenty per cent of the world’s population is going to be Muslim one day and they have expectations, they have needs,’ said Van Dijk.

‘If they want to be confident that what they eat and drink is in line with their beliefs, then a company likes ours has to make an extra effort to try and meet those needs.’

About 85 of Nestle’s 456 factories globally are now halal-certified but Van Dijk said different interpretations of halal standards around the world were a challenge for the industry.

Muslim jurists do not always agree on what is halal. Islam prohibits the consumption of pork and prescribes how animals must be slaughtered, but there has been debate on the acceptability of non-alcoholic beer, collagen and vinegar.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is working on a single standard to be applied in its 57 member countries, a move that would boost the industry, although politics and varied interpretations may complicate the task. —Reuters

URDU and Hindi have been the most disruptive languages for South Asia. Urdu, for completely spurious reasons, was declared the national language of Pakistan. Hindi was wrongly but aggressively foisted as the main language of a Unitarian Indian state.

The conception of Urdu as a linguistic attribute of South Asian Muslims — the reason for its embrace by Pakistan — would be laughable had it not led to a tragic denouement for the country. The creation of Bangladesh questioned the axiom.

Several linguistic groups within Pakistan and many more Muslim clusters in India mock the primacy accorded to Urdu because of a communally enforced error. Likewise, none except a section of the mostly upper caste elite in India speaks Hindi. They condescend to assert that Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Brajbhasha, etc are dialects of Hindi.

The fact is that a speaker of one can’t understand the other. Let Mr Lal Kishan Advani summarise the Bhojpuri news telecast on the Mahua TV channel. He would pine for visitors from Pakistan’s Sindh province to give him some badly needed comfort.

(The late K.R. Malkani, another rightwing ideologue from Sindh, believed in the waning ideology of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan. He asked me to write an Urdu verse, which he liked and wanted to publish in his party organ. I scribbled the lines in Devnaagri, the common script for Hindi, which he confessed he couldn’t read. So I dictated the verse in Urdu for an ardent advocate of Hindi!)

It has been strongly suggested that Hindi and Urdu are in fact the same language with different scripts. There is no evidence to support the suggestion. Moreover, the way they have evolved belies the claim. One has become Persianised, the other Sanskritised.

Asankhya kirti rashmiya’n vikirn divya daah si, saput matra bhumi ke ruko na shur saahasi! How many members of the Indian parliament or even the ultra-patriotic NRIs can absorb Jai Shankar Prasad’s exhortation to nation-building?

Loo’n waam bakhte khufta se ik khwaab e khushwale, lekin ye khauf hai ki kahaa’n se adaa karoo’n! How many popularly elected members in Pakistan’s National Assembly can explain Ghalib’s sorrow at his inability to dream dreams? It’s difficult.

The imposition of any culture on another group has parallels with the Taliban. The Taliban believe, for example, that their shalwar kurtawith a turban is a divine dress code. Arab, Malayaali and Indonesian Muslims among others would strongly disagree. The entire controversy in Pakistan about the sari is rooted in ethnic and religious bigotry. Indian bigots harass women who wear jeans and lipstick.

Similarly, imposing a language is an expression of cultural zealotry. In India, Maharashtra was created as a linguistic state like Gujarat and several other South Indian provinces. Migrant workers in Mumbai though speak their respective languages. Hindi-Urdu cinema has enabled millions to understand the language. These may include Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati, etc.

Members of Raj Thackeray’s Marathi-chauvinist party attacked Maharashtra assembly member Abu Azmi for taking his legislator’s oath in Hindi. (It was probably in Urdu though.) The constitution of India allows elected legislators to address their state assembly in Hindi and English, which are flaunted as national languages. But the fact is that Hindi (in Azmi’s case, Urdu) is essentially an imposition through a constitutional fiat and doesn’t have a popular sanctity outside the artificial arrangement.

In any case Marathi is by far the richer language than Hindi. Marathi theatre and literature, its natya sangeet, bhaav geet or koli geet of the fisher folk have few challengers and Hindi is not one of them. Also, be it classical Hindustani music or folk nautanki theatre, their language is Brajbhasha or Awadhi, not Hindi. Little remains of Hindi if we delete Kabir, Surdas, Raskhan, Meera, Tulsidas, Rahim and so on.

They wrote in languages which are today called dialects. This sounds like nonsense. Ghuturun chalat renu tanu mandit mukh dadhi lape kiye. Is this Hindi? If so, how many so-called Hindi-speakers will know the meaning?

The great blind poet Surdas just described those lines Lord Krishna’s childhood. The language was ornate Brajbhasha, spoken around Mathura. Would Surdas understand the following description by Tulsidas of Lord Ram’s childhood in chaste Awadhi? Kilaki kilaki uthat dhaaya. Girat bhoomi latapataay. Dhaay maat gode lete, Dasharath kee raniya. D.V.Paluskar made this verse about toddler Ram and his doting mother quite popular, but it is not in Hindi. It is in Awadhi, a language that a Hindi-knower can understand with great difficulty, if at all.

Abu Azmi deliberately spoke in Hindi/Urdu because it would help him polarise his Mumbai constituency comprising migrant workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. In doing so he was poking an unpredictable beast in the eye. He dare not try the stunt in Tamil Nadu or any other linguistically sensitive state.

Mr Azmi should realise that Marathi is not just a rich language. In fact, because of the sway that Maratha power held over vast tracts of India, it is best equipped to be the national language, any day a better idea than All India Radio-style Hindi.

This is not to deny that Raj Thackeray and his uncle Bal Thackeray represent India’s fascist tendencies. Their politics is based on spewing hatred of the ‘other’, be it Muslims or migrant workers from Bihar. At one time the Shiv Sena, which they had led together, spread hatred of Brahmins, South Indians and Christians among others.

The Congress party set up the group in the 1960s to crush Mumbai’s powerful trade unions with lumpen street power. Indeed, leaders like Bal Thackeray and Narendra Modi are used by India’s big corporates and multinational companies to split industrial workers communally, which then impairs their bargaining power. Like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in Punjab, shored up by the Congress as a foil to the Akalis, the Shiv Sena may have become a veritable Frankenstein’s monster.

Abu Azmi’s needlessly provocative antics might fetch him extra votes or perhaps a seat in parliament. But it could seriously harm the fragile cultural bouquet of Mumbai. If he likes, there is another way of claiming popularity, not only in Mumbai but anywhere in India.

Let’s call it Abdul Karim Khan’s way. Like Azmi, Khan Sahib was a devout Muslim migrant who came to the Marathi-speaking court of Baroda as a musician from Kirana in Punjab.

Karim Khan expounded a style of singing which is embraced today by hundreds of talented Maharashtrian singers. Not only that, he composed and sang songs for Marathi theatre in Marathi language, which he learnt with considerable diligence. When he went to meet Carnatic musicians in South India, he picked up something from there too. The legendary Balasaraswathi’s mother taught him to sing Raag Kharaharpriya. There’s a moving record of it still available.

Mr Azmi should try to take a leaf from the notes of Ustad Abdul Karim Khan. This Hindi-Urdu chauvinism is just that. Eject it.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

RIYADH: Thirty years ago, as tens of thousands of hajj pilgrims were completing dawn prayers inside Mecca, gunshots pierced the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.

To mark a new century on the Islamic calendar, a group of millennialist zealots, who claimed to have with them the new redeemer — the mahdi — seized Islam’s holiest site.

The November 20, 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Oteibi and his 400-plus fundamentalists, and the subsequent unholy, bloody military assault to dislodge them, stunned Muslims worldwide and rocked the Saudi monarchy to its foundation.

While Oteibi and 67 fellow militants were ultimately caught and beheaded, and the mahdi was shot dead in the battle, the incident continues to reverberate through Saudi society and the world, say historians.

‘It is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamic violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning,’ wrote Yaroslav Trofimov, author of the most complete account of the uprising, ‘The Siege of Mecca’.

The hajj had just finished when Oteibi and his band smuggled hundreds of assault weapons into the mosque at the centre of Mecca.

Angered at what they saw was Saudi society’s plunge into immorality, with Muslims embracing ‘Western’ entertainment like cinema, television and sports, and Muslim women taking jobs, Oteibi’s act was to herald a new age of purism.

His army took over every corner of the massive walled mosque, locking shut the normally welcoming gates, sending machine-gun armed snipers into the seven minarets, and taking hostage hundreds of the faithful.

Quickly shooting dead two guards who resisted, they denounced Saudi Arabia’s leading clerics as corrupt and the ruling Al-Saud family as illegitimate.

Snipers picked off arriving policemen and soldiers and it would take two weeks and a massive Saudi army effort, that began with shelling the mosque and ended up with hand-to-hand fighting, to regain control.

The soldiers were backed by a small team of French commandos, led by the now infamous Lieutenant Paul Barril, and endorsed by a fatwa extracted the highest clerics that it was permissible to shoot the militants inside the sanctum.

The official death toll was 127 soldiers, 117 militants, and an unknown number of civilians. Trofimov cites independent observers in reporting a toll of ‘well over 1,000 lives.’

For most of the three million pilgrims massing in Mecca in the coming week for the hajj, Oteibi’s takeover of the Grand Mosque is likely a vague memory.

Many details — including whether the non-Muslim French commandos were allowed
inside Mecca — remain secret.

But 30 years later, the intense security around Mecca, a sharp turn toward more conservative behaviour in Saudi society, and the very present Al-Qaeda threat, attest to lasting effects of the 1979 siege.

Sparked by Oteibi’s complaints, Saudi religious leaders now ban movie theatres, and public concerts of all but traditional music are unknown.

Women cannot drive or attend soccer matches, and the religious police try to enforce a stringent dress code for them: all-black shroud-like abayas, with all but the eyes covered.

Robert Lacey, whose new book ‘Inside the Kingdom’ traces Saudi history from the Mecca siege to the present, said there is no proven direct link between Oteibi and Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

‘The link between Juhayman and bin Laden is that they are clearly in the Salafi tradition,’ he told AFP, referring to the arch-conservative Islamic movement.

‘Their messianic style — from their long, Salafi beards to their quarrel with the House of Saud — stem from the same violent and rejectionist reading of traditional Islam,’ he said.

‘We can now see that Juhayman’s revolt helped shift Saudi society in the conservative and reactionary direction that has only been seriously contested in the last few years.’

Trofimov drew a closer parallel, saying that in many ways Oteibi’s multinational army of zealous Islamic fighters ‘was a precursor to Al-Qaeda itself.’

By the 1990s, when bin Laden turned against the Saudi rulers, ‘he started to repeat almost word for word Juhayman’s repudiations of the royal family,’ Trofimov wrote.

And indeed, several Oteibi acolytes joined Al-Qaeda after their release from Saudi prisons, he said.

Similar tensions remain in Saudi society. Progressives are pressing for theatres; a women’s soccer team plays — though not publicly — in Jeddah; and clerics are battling what they see as licentious television shows broadcast by satellite from abroad.

Meanwhile a resurgent Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen attacks King Abdullah’s reforms as abandoning ‘true’ Islam. In August a Qaeda operative tried but failed to kill a top security official, Prince Mohammmed bin Nayef, with a suicide bomb.

In October Qaeda plots to attack unknown targets in the kingdom were interrupted, with hundreds of weapons, explosives and suicide vests discovered and dozens of suspects captured.

JAKARTA: Hollywood’s latest doomsday offering ‘2012′ has caused a storm in Indonesia, with conservative clerics condemning it Thursday as a ‘provocation against Islam.’

Screenings have been sold out across the capital Jakarta following the film’s success in North America, where it beat Disney’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ to top the box office honours last weekend.

It looks likely to repeat its success in Indonesia, the Southeast Asian archipelago with the world’s biggest Muslim population, judging by the queues at cinemas in its opening days this week.

But while most viewers said they had enjoyed the film’s apocalyptic vision of life after December 21, 2012, when the fulfilment of a Mayan prophecy sees the Earth engulfed by catastrophe, senior clerics were deeply troubled.

The country’s top Islamic body, the National Council of Ulema (MUI), is divided over whether or not to issue a fatwa or religious edict against the film. One local branch has already done so, to little apparent effect.

‘The controversial things about the film are, first, in Islam doomsday should not be visualised or predicted, it’s the secret of God,’ council chairman Amidhan told AFP.

‘For the common people, the portrayal of doomsday in this film could distort their faith – that’s what I’m worried about.’

He also complained that the film showed mosques being destroyed but not churches, despite sequences depicting the Vatican collapsing and Rio de Janeiro’s monumental Christ the Redeemer statue crumbling to pieces.

‘The film shows that everything including Kaaba (Islam holiest shrine) and mosques were devastated except for churches. The film is a provocation against Islam,’ Amidhan said.

‘The Indonesian film censorship body should have cut part of the scene on the devastation of mosques or the Kaaba because it hurts the Muslim people.’

But few people who emerged from a packed matinee showing in Jakarta on Thursday shared the clerics’ worries.

‘It’s actually a beautiful film. The MUI branch is wrong about issuing a fatwa as the movie actually has increased my faith and not the other way around,’ insurance broker Ian Ramelan, 49, said.

‘I’m a Muslim, my faith in Allah is stronger after watching this flick,’ he added, urging the clerics to worry more about rampant corruption in Indonesia than about Hollywood’s apocalyptic Christmas blockbuster.

University student Rafi Gamal, 22, said he understood that some people might think the film controversial ‘because men were able to predict doomsday and thus played the role of God.’

‘But then again it’s just another natural disaster movie in which there are some survivors in the end. The end of the world means that there’ll be no survivors,’ he said.

Junior high school student Steven Benedictto, 14, said the film had a positive message.

‘I disagree with the MUI that people should not watch this movie. It has a beautiful message that we all should repent and industries should reduce their sinful activities, such as deforestation,’ he said.

KARACHI: Top Pakistani squash players Aamir Atlas Khan and Maria Toor have been nominated for Professional Squash Association Young Player of the Year and Women’s International Squash Players Association (WISPA) Young Player of the Year, respectively, by the World Squash Federation.

Both Aamir and Maria belong to the North West Frontier Province, home also to Pakistan squash legends Jahangir and Jansher Khan, where they train amidst constant threats from the Taliban. While it has been a comparatively easy ride for Aamir, by virtue of being a male in a part of the country where residents adhere to strict Islamic law, for the 19-year-old Maria it has been a journey of immense courage and perseverance.

Growing up in South Waziristan, Maria was a very different girl, often getting into brawls with boys and generally being very dominating, some very unusual traits for women in NWFP. She was equally lucky to have an open-minded father who noticed his daughter’s sporting talent and ability and did not want it to go to waste.

‘I didn’t want her talent to go to waste,’ Shams-ul-Qayum Wazir said in an interview to CNN. ‘If I would’ve kept her in the village, all she could do was housekeeping,’ he added satisfied with his decision to pack up from South Waziristan and move to Peshawar in late 1999.

Upon her move to Peshawar, Maria was immediately inducted into the Hashim Khan Complex, named after the first great player to emerge from a Pakistani dynasty of squash players which dominated the international game for decades.

It was in Peshawar where her father really began to realise the true potential his daughter had. Representing Warsak High School in Peshawar, Maria became the youngest ever winner of the National Women’s Squash Championship toppling top seed Muqaddas Ashraf of Punjab in straight sets in the final at Karachi Club squash court in 2004. She was 13 at the time and while the cash prize of Rs. 8,500 and a crystal trophy felt good, it was really the satisfaction of being better than everyone that was to accelerate Maria’s drive. She quickly swatted through her competition winning an Under-15 tournament and then at 15 winning the Under-19 Hashim Khan National junior championship in 2005.

She scaled through the national rankings, Dunlop racquet in hand with an almost Muhammad Ali-like confidence, often calling her self the world’s best squash player in some of her post-match press conferences. It was this self belief and great form that finally brought her to the world stage when she joined the WISPA in 2006. She was immediately at ease on the international circuit as well, reaching the semi-final stage of the 2nd WISPA International Women’s Squash Championship at the POF Jahangir Khan Complex in Islamabad.

In early August 2007 she was given the Salaam Pakistan Award by the President of Pakistan, alongside tennis player Aisam Ul Haq Qureshi and footballer Muhammad Essa.

The year 2009 saw her win her first international tournament when she beat the same opponent she had defeated as a 13-year-old. Muqaddas Ashraf once again succumbed to Maria’s power and agility losing the Chief of Army Staff International squash tournament.

Winning an award at this year’s World Squash Awards being held the RAC Club in London is something Maria is looking forward to but her main objective is to carry on the great legacy left behind by the Khans and to put Pakistan’s name back at the top on the world stage.

For her father her achievements have already shown the true spirit of people of Waziristan, a far cry from what is has become today.

How do you, indeed? Meera does the rounds via SMS jokes about her English. Meera helps a damp squib sink to the bottom of the Indian box office. Meera’s alleged husband turns up demanding his house and crores back. Meera predicts she’ll be linked to Musharraf and Clinton next (you wish, M). Meera is the opposite of Humayun Saeed, says Mahesh Bhatt with tongue in cheek. And most recently, Meera interviews photographer Tapu Javeri in her very own talk show.

If, after seeing that clip, you cringed and wrote ‘Not funny,’ or ‘Not her language’ under the link on Facebook, this blog is for you. And if you hooted and laughed, read ahead anyway.

When was the last time you heard about the woman actually doing what she originally became famous for? Remember Meera the actress? No? That’s because last time you saw her she was a wannabe talk show host. As the maybe-been-to-school Meera tried to interview Javeri (of all people) in English (of all languages) one really began to wonder whether she was dropped on her head as a baby.

And before you say she was set up, let’s pause for a moment and accept that some producer hatched the plan with a few friends, laughed about it with his colleagues, and then gave Meera a call in the morning. How cruel. But only if she had been kidnapped, dragged by the hair to the studio, and shown a gun. My point is, Meera did the show willingly, in that slinky black dress with immaculate makeup and a camera in the room. She spent hours there knowing, better than us, that she didn’t know the language. You and I wouldn’t plunge ourselves headlong into a made-for-Filipino-audiences talk show in Tagalog. At least not before some solid language lessons.

The fact is, despite her shenanigans, Meera remains important. Her importance is the same as the importance of the village idiot in a, well, village. She completes the landscape. And for everyone going out on a limb to defend her by citing her ‘lacks’ (of education, background, upbringing) the moment has arrived, post-talk show clip, to just drop it. Stop feeling some elitist guilt about her ‘lacks.’ Delete that ‘Not funny’ that you wrote on Facebook, hold your stomach, throw your head back, and truly laugh for a change. There are very, very few moments that make us laugh in this country, so cherish one when it is provided.

Despite the illiteracy and tastelessness that rules the roost in what’s left of Lollywood, few of its divas make such obvious public blunders with such ridiculous regularity. Time was when Reema would roll out memorised English at award shows to sniggers from all the angrezi-medium types. But Reems has been earning our admiration (because English earns that sort of thing here) as she speaks the language nearly flawlessly, if a little formally, today. The woman has used her time and money wisely to get what she wants.

Saima, another Lollywood mainstay, once admitted in a TV interview that she had never been to school. But really, do you care when you see her light up the silver screen when you watch a Pakistani flick for a laugh and find out that you really can’t laugh at her skills? And Resham who is just too busy wowing us with her metamorphoses in TV play after TV play, and who just doesn’t have the time to worry about English or her lack of it. And their scandals? If ever they leak out, these actresses handle them in a manner that is usually informed by the knowledge that they are public figures. These same actresses, with all their ‘lacks,’ handle it better than Paris Hilton, who incidentally had access to the best education, a privileged background in the most privileged country in the world, and an upbringing by educated, if not sensible, parents as well as a host of educated nannies.

It is not Meera’s circumstances, as the Meera-bachao brigade have put forward, but a politically incorrect ‘lack of intelligence.’ And hence, everything.

This is not a rant against Meera. It is about accepting that she, like Hilton, is missing a couple of million grey cells. More importantly, this is about accepting that when her next big scandal explodes, We, the people, will watch it again in all its trashy glory. It’s also about accepting that a lot of people will laugh. She’s a celebrity for goodness sake. And celebrities who put themselves out there do so knowing that people can and do laugh. Even Meera, as she stumbles over all English in the YouTube clip, has the foresight to remark that ‘mera record lagay ga.’

Hilton, Raakhi Sawant, and Malika Sherawat. Since the world turned into a global village, around the world, pop culture’s been cultivating celebrities to fulfill the role traditionally played by the courtjester.

For all her ‘lacks,’ Meera is an adult who has had the exposure reserved for the top one percent of this country. She scores extra points on exposure, because she has actually risen from nothing. It’s not her deprivations which have made her stupid. It’s her wickedly brilliant luck and drive that have made her famous. And still the learning curve flatlines. Does she love the attention? Doesn’t Paris Hilton?

So please don’t cry for ‘poor little Meera.’ She’s not a babe in the wild, wild woods. She’s certainly not the proverbial deer in the headlights (even though she looks as pretty as one sometimes). She’s not a bechari. To think that makes us patronising and sorely lacking in humour.

She is, on the other hand, our Paris Hilton. Our Malika Sherawat. Our very own village idiot. Which brings us back to the original question, how do you solve a problem like Meera? And the answer to that is a firm: ‘You don’t.’

Shahrezad Samiuddin is a freelance writer who doesn’t think enough attention is paid to the frivolous, even though it is all around us.

PESHAWAR: Doctors and nurses battle round the clock to save lives in Pakistan’s war against the Taliban, threatened with death and struggling to treat horrific injuries at a colonial-era hospital.

‘We’re under severe psychological pressure. How long will we get bodies of men, women and children, severed limbs, severed heads?’ said Sajida Nasreen, catching her breath on duty at the main hospital in the northwest city of Peshawar.

‘A dead 11-year-old was brought in, drenched in blood but his shoes shining with polish. His father came, lifted the child onto his lap, kissed him and said: ‘I sent you to school, not to die’.

‘For the first time in my career, I wept bitterly,’ said the nurse, who at 53 thought she had seen everything until Al-Qaeda-linked attacks got worse and worse, killing 2,540 people in Pakistan over 29 months.

‘Those responsible should see the situation in the hospital to understand what these blasts do,’ she added.

Lady Reading Hospital, or LRH as it is known among the 2.5 million residents of Peshawar, was founded in 1924 when Lord Reading was viceroy of India and is now one of Pakistan’s largest teaching hospitals.

On a visit to the area, his wife fell off a horse and suffered an injury, only to find proper treatment was unavailable locally. In England, she collected donations from British philanthropists and set up a hospital that ultimately took her name.

But the romance of its beginnings has vanished under the carnage witnessed in Peshawar and the surrounding North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where Taliban bombings and military offensives have been concentrated.

‘We have dealt with 49 blasts… 2,200 injured and 576 bodies in bombings,’ Doctor Ataullah Arif, surgeon in charge of the emergency ward, told AFP.

Tactics are changing. Bombings of crowded markets are beginning to maximise civilian casualties. Attacks on the army, police and paramilitary to avenge the government’s alliance in the US-led ‘war on terror’ are becoming more brazen.

‘Victims are pouring in almost daily now. We start our day with prayers that may Allah spare us from tragedy,’ said Arif.

‘We have been working under severe stress over the past two months. I can’t explain the situation in words.

‘Very often there are bodies and blood, as rows of stretchers start flowing amid shouts and screams,’ he said.

The 1,543 beds are woefully inadequate and the hospital is struggling to overcome dire shortages to build a 500-bed emergency ward.

‘In an emergency, sometimes we put two wounded on one bed and people with lesser injuries are treated on the floor or in wheelchairs,’ said Arif.

There are fears that a suicide bomber could strike the hospital, a soft target.

There are eight gates into the 30-acre compound guarded by just seven policemen, Arif says.

‘Our staff are constantly in danger. They are under severe threat from militants.We have received calls from militants, warning the staff ‘you are treating those who are our target. We will not spare you.’’

LRH chief executive, Doctor Abdul Hameed Afridi, says shortage of space is so acute that the basement was converted into a mortuary last year.

‘We face great difficulty in coping with the situation. We badly need funds, equipment and trained staff. In such a big hospital, we have just one CT scan machine and no MRI facility,’ said Afridi.

‘We need life saving drugs. LRH bears the pressure not only from NWFP but from Afghanistan. When there is a big disaster in Afghanistan casualties are also sent to Peshawar,’ he said.

Aged 25, Bibi Zakia is one of LRH’s younger nurses but has grown old quickly in the face of horror.

‘It is a human crisis. It’s a huge burden. We have to treat not only the victims, but also take care of their relatives,’ she said.

‘We are tired but I’m proud to be a nurse and I think I’m better than millions of others because I’m serving humanity.’But even hardened nurses sometimes find it difficult to cope with the magnitude of the suffering.

One particular occasion was a car bomb on October 28 that killed 118 people in Peshawar’s Meena market, frequented by women and children, in the deadliest militant attack in Pakistan for two years.

‘I remember two charred bodies of children. They looked like roast chickens. It was horrible. I couldn’t control myself. Pain and anguish filled my body and I screamed and I shouted: what was their crime?’