I am getting deeply suspicious. There is a rather naughty trick used by some con artists. You start a game of darts or tennis or whatever, pretending that you are a lefty. Obviously, you lose badly, and when everyone has bet against you, you switch to your right hand, win the match, and walk off with all the money. What I want to know is, where has the Pakistan-A cricket team come from all of a sudden. And more to the point, why have we been playing with B team all these years. Also, are we sure that we are playing the Indian A team or are they planning to pull a surprise on us as well? The series has just started and already the twists and turns in the plot have left me breathless.
To be honest, I am not that interested in cricket, but the plot twists are suspiciously similar to the good old days of Indian movies. This is when the climax of the film lasted a good 20 minutes and had a minimum of four sudden twists. The first twist would occur when the hero/heroes were chained in the villains' hideout with the heroine/heroines doing a little diversionary dance number. At this point they would discover either a long lost parent of that they were brothers.
There were many variants to the twist but to my disappointment, never once in the history of cinema did the hero and heroine discover that they were brother and sister (or indeed, parent and child, which would have quite plausible given the difference in age between male and female actors).
The second twist would occur when the heroes would cunningly untie a chain, steal a gun, etc. and have the villain at bay. Unfortunately, again in all of cinematic history, none of the heroes had heard that an action speaks louder than a thousand words. While they would be relating a list of grievances, another twist would occur with the villains son/henchman stealing a gun or turning up with yet another long lost parent/sibling as hostage. The final twist would turn tables again and at this pint a spare heroine/parent would be mortally wounded and justice would belatedly triumph with the arrival of the police.
The reason that I have gone at some length about this is that I suspect that this Indo-Pak series has been fixed. Neither of the two countries was taking the chance of any unpleasantness and they have fixed all the matches to provide the maximum of entertainment and the minimum of embarrassment to both sides. I also think they have hired one of the old Indian film directors to stage-manage all this. He has already pulled off one twist with the Pakistan A team. I bet in the next twist we will have the appearance of an Indian A team. Then two or three of the players on either side will discover that they are long lost brothers, there will be a few dance numbers and cross border marriages and the tour will wind up with the whole sub-continent weeping in joyous emotion. At least that is what the director planned, but I have warned you.
And if you think I am being paranoid, remember that the last period of really good relations started with General Zia declaring that he and Rajiv were long lost brothers and the actress Reena Roy getting married to one of our cricketers. On other fronts, traffic in Lahore is getting back to normal with the opening of the new canal underpass. With it, one can now sweep non-stop down the canal at a blistering 30kms behind the three motorcycle-wallahs having a conversation and the overloaded Suzuki pickup trying to overtake them.
Flushed with success, the government has announced another three underpasses. This reminds me a little of my niece. On Basant I gave her little kite a kanni so that she could have a laugh. Five hours later I was giving the 900th kanni. So all these underpasses are very delightful, but I was just wondering if anyone else in Punjab needed anything done.
By Yasser Hashmi
Courtesy Dawn
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