It is already August, and come September, it will be just a few weeks to the great E-lection; and there is a certain sizzle and crackle in the air. It bodes well and is heartening, yet I must admit it is sizzle and crackle of a most peculiar kind.
You see, one month before a much-awaited election, one would expect much talk of manifestos, issues and personalities, lively debate and sober argumentation. There is not a peep of anything remotely like that.
Instead, there is microscopic examination of the polling process and endless nitpicking. They pore over the published electoral rolls to find the name of someone who died half an hour ago and is still warm and they scream that the rolls are 'hopelessly out-of-date', and the fake vote of the single dead man is going to change the result's complexion.
People who actually expect to win elections and come into power debate the issues and issue manifestos. The nitpickers are the old politicos who know they have little future and are desperately looking for excuses to offer afterwards!
I am reminded of the time, some years ago, when we were planning a big conference of advertisers from all over Asia to be called AdAsia. We worked hard for a year, hounded by friend Javed Jabbar, and just before the date he was appointed federal minister for information, and the bureaucrats did the rest of the work.
The morning of the conference we went to see the arrangements, and found there wasn't a single typewriter around. Consternation! I had espied Javed's ministerial limousine with a neat little national flag on the bumper!
I told him if he'd lend me the flag car, with liveried chauffeur, I'd go get some. I rode the flag car to the nearest showroom, found some old pupils, bunged all their best electric machines in the boot and settled down to drive back in style. At the first crossroads, a traffic cop stepped into the road and stopped us, and I decided to lay it on thick.
Rolled down my window, raised my eyebrows and said, "Yes?" The cop smiled, then giggled and said he recognised, and he recognised I was in a flag car too, but there was this man on a bicycle following me and trying frantically to stop me!
In my smooth prowess, I had taken the machines, and forgotten the power cables, and they'd sent the man to catch me and deliver them on a cycle, and he said, "Sirjee we love you, but if you are born to a bicycle, you stand or fall by a bicycle even when you ride a flag car!" His ilk wasn't doing much better.
The final event of the conference was to be a great banquet for all the beautiful people in town at the wonderful Lahore Citadel. And it looked marvellous with the glorious old monuments floodlit in the background.
My own cultural contribution was the Burj. That is a hot air baloon, a small bag made of coloured tissue paper, and you light a fire underneath and it rises into the air.
I'd had five hundred made, and gave one to each of the beautiful ladies to launch. The fire came from a simple wad of cotton wool soaked in kerosene and strung on a thin wire.
We were lucky because it was still with a very gentle breeze and as they were launched they rose and hung in the air above the garden. I counted and there seemed to be only about two hundred! I called the assistants, and they yelled blue murder!
It seems that after the first few rose into the air looking gorgeous, the rest of the ladies, in all their finery, simply folded theirs, complete with kerosene soaked wads, and stuck them in their handbags! The change at the best shops in town smelt of kerosene for weeks!
