Letter From Lahore

The kite-flying season is long since over, and the politics season is not quite in yet, and that leaves us with nothing to do. So, we have taken to making the best of both worlds.

The number of kites being flown on the political horizon each day would make the Night Basant look like a damp squib. Speculation is not the word for it. It is not even making mountains out of molehills. If anything, it is conjuring up demons out of thin air!

There was this tiny item saying the young children of Shahbaz Sharif had been allowed by their hosts to go to London. Their plane must still have been taxiing when there were screaming headlines that it was all a ruse because London is actually the shortest cut back to Lahore.

They went on to expand on the theme. It was much bigger because all had been settled. The kids would be followed by the father, who would be elected chief of his party, which would then get elected and call everyone back.

By this time the date set for intra-party elections came round, and the party split into so many factions they are going to take years thinking up names for them and listing them. And the kids never came. So the papers have shut up about the League – and taken on the People's Party.

It is true that they were given reason. You see the leader of the party has been abroad for some time, hovering on the fringes and unable to come home for any number of reasons.

So the party back home has conjured up a brand new trick. They have formed a new party, called the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians – which abbreviates not to PPP but PPPP! – to be able to register and enter the forthcoming elections.

Now there is an even wilder kite being flown. Everyone has been so busy mucking around with the coming elections for Parliament, and hence Premier, that they have quite ignored the other aspect.

Well, our friendly correspondents in the press haven't forgotten. The latest kite is that since Ms Bhutto cannot come for the elections, after the elections she will come and stand for the other office of President.

Failing that there is the office of queen! You must forgive me. But this is a time of hope and anticipation, and I am a bit impatient with silliness! They don't realise that we have other things to think about.

Like the weather! Seriously. We are smack in the middle of the monsoon season of rains, and the Meteorological Office had, with great fanfare predicted back in April that this monsoon would be an especially heavy one.

Instead, in a month and a half of official rains, we have had three widely separated sprinkles which have barely settled the dust raised by the kids trying to spell meteorological! So the Office called a huge press conference, and issued a great statement the gist of which was that they are 'reassessing the forecast for the rest of the season'!

Let me get that straight. Since the forecast for the preceding half of the season turned out to be a lot of bull, they are going to change that for the remaining time. And what about it? As there have been no rains, does that mean more, or less, rains in the rest? They'll tell us when they have reassessed it!

Then a reporter was fool enough to ask a silly question. As the Met office was unwilling to foretell the future, maybe they could at least foretell the past! So he asked if the lack of rains in July meant we were in for drought conditions? "Oh! No, no, no, no, ha, ha, ha, no such thing!"

They laughed. Then what? Then this. Well they agreed that it would mean there would be a shortage of water! But they hastened to add that there was not much to worry about because, well, there would be shortage only if it did not rain adequately during the rest of the season!

Now you wouldn't have known that if you didn't have a degree in meteorology, would you? And you would have had to eat your soggy umbrella!