Unorganized Thoughts

The vow of silence, that has been in news, was called by someone on Twitter as 'Talking Strike'. Is that the correct term? To me it sounds so right that when I read the term 'Hunger Strike' it makes me visualize a guy, dressed in all-white on a dais, hogging himself to death -- refusing to let go of the hamburgers until his voice is heard, which is getting increasingly difficult with his mouth full and voice muffled. 'Eating Strike' instead, anyone?
But the term 'Talking Strike' conveys what it really is: lame. Talking isn't a survival function. You can't die without talking. You can die without eating.

It really saddened me last year to read about the history of Pakistan and about the historical relations between China and Japan. I was sad that I didn't know much about them. And I blame this on the schooling system in India which is obsessed with Europe so much that I knew the meaning of the term 'Renaissance' by the time I was ten, but all I knew about China was that it's a strange neighbor that was conspicuous by its absence from the mythological epics as well as from the chapters on World Wars but eventually attacked us for no justifiable reason and despite Nehru being so charming and so friendly, in nineteen-sixty-two. Opium Wars sounded to me like two armies completely high on opium and struggling to find their feet, their guns, and their way back home. (Albeit less funny than the Boston Tea Party which, when the teacher told us about, convinced me that the history teacher was smoking something secretly as was every one's favorite rumor in school.) How many dictators had Pakistan seen before Musharraf? How many had they not seen? I couldn't remember and it was really humiliating.

But I have finally found the textbook that has almost everything one should know and therefore should have been used in my school and in your school too. I am glad to have finally found the book 'Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitaab' by Ibn-e-Insha which had been elusive, almost to the point of being mythic, to me for the past ten years. It had been claimed by one rather literary-minded senior to be the funniest as well as the most profound book ever written. The name, literally 'The Last Book of Urdu', had often suggested to me that it was a joke, an obscure joke funny only to the literary-minded, and I should stop making a fool of myself by walking into shops full of no-nonsense students and parents and asking for 'Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitaab' only to be told there is no such book. Anyway, I have found and read the book now and it was disappointing to find that the book has been so influential and seminal that most of the jokes have entered the popular culture now and therefore look stale. Despite most of the book being mostly in Hindustani, it's often a little hard to follow since all the proper-proper Urdu words haven't been explained in footnotes. Even though more often the not you get the drift of the joke, it can be dissatisfying to not know the language. The book, I think, ranks up there with Italo Calvino's 'If On A Winter's Night A Traveler' (though the former is not a novel) in terms of it being 'breathtakingly inventive'. The fake letter to the author from the chairman of the text books selection committee of Pakistan, the structure of the book being divided into subjects such as History, Geography, Algebra, and Animals etc., and the best of all: the questions at the end of chapters (like textbooks) the humor of which cannot be described by any of the words that I know. I think 'childish' comes close but I will let you decide for yourselves with a few sample questions:

• Write in brief about the Gakkhar tribe. But maintain a little distance: they are dangerous people.
• Name a few actors from the movie Sikandar-e-azam. If you can recall any song from the movie, sing us that. 
• When Humayun died after slipping from his roof, which stars was he looking at? Film stars or common stars? 
• Where is Samgarh? Write the name of its king, his father's name, and his residential address. There is no reason to panic.

And finally, the set of questions which had tears rolling down my cheek (TRDMC, in short):
1. Why did Mahmud Ghazni attack India seventeen times?
2. Which country did Mahmud Ghazni attack seventeen times?
3. Which king attacked India seventeen times?
4. Why didn't Mahmud Ghazni attack India eighteen times? Why did he get bored after seventeen?
Note: Question nos. 4, 1, 2, and 3 are compulsory.


The chapter on Grammar had an exrecise in which the reader is expected to turn the given sentence as dirty as possible. Example:
Q: Even a child can handle this equipment.
A: "Even a child can handle this equipment", said the pedophile.
Actually, I wish this exercise was there in the book, but it wasn't. A brilliant book, otherwise.