Spotlight: A journey into the minds of our greats! Don't believe every word of it!: A penny for your thoughts! (Part Two)

Guess Who-5? I must not let departed big brass come back, ever. I have had enough of Boots. At the same time, I must give the goldwallah and his friends a long enough rope to hang themselves. I need to be wary of him, though. Every time he is in trouble he manages to sweet-talk me into bailing him out and once he thinks he has his feet on firm ground again, he begins to harass and undercut me.
Despite all the care I exercise, all the precautions I take, he manages to get the better of me every time, as if his plant in the big province, a constant pain in the neck were not already enough of a bother. A new headache is the evergreen saint-turned-politician who could complicate things. Business is much simpler! Why don't I just get the hell out of here and focus on that? In politics and statecraft I am a born loser some say. That is not the sum total of my problems.
Several of my past actions keep coming back to haunt me like Shakespearean nightmares (Queen Mab is the queen of nightmares in Romeo and Juliet. According to Mercutio, "Dreamers often lie."): the assault on the Umpires' House in my time which disaster people will not allow me to forget, the "Deal" under which I made my escape to the holy land and whose existence I keep denying in vain, questions on my income and tax profile, which show no sign of dying down.
These are some of the things, which disturb and shatter the halo, which I want to have around my head for all to see. On the top of all this, some of my people are getting restive and trying to break free, among them the Multan man, who had displayed the courage (I would say foolishness) to suffer long imprisonment. I cannot but feel upset when my people compare that with my own run for safety. So there is a lot to live down. If it is any consolation, my rivals are all similarly handicapped. They all have plenty to live down.
And to think only two years back I was riding a wave of popular approval with over two-thirds of the people polled, saying I had a great future in the country's politics! Well there is always the business to fall back upon if nothing else eventually succeeds.
Guess Who-6? It was a great honour to be selected as Party Chief Talker. I could not sleep for a full 36 hours when I was given the good news! But phew! What a job it turned out to be! Having defended, tooth and nail the boss's shenanigans and those of his on-the-run-from-the-law cronies in the government for over a year now, I feel I can now defend any and everything under the sun, however inexcusable or appalling! I often wonder whether it is worth it! If the boss's fortunes sink, as appears inevitable, I would forever in the future be pecked at and branded as his erstwhile defender.
My predecessor, who left the job (or was thrown out of it), would not carry that stigma. Now the Shy One has begun to share my role, gradually becoming as outspoken as myself. Does she also share these, my innermost thoughts? It is, perhaps, too early for that. She has yet to come to terms with her new glory. The awakening would come later. Another young upstart and loud mouth has taken the Channel discussions by storm for my party. He has more vehmence, bluff, bluster and sheer volume than I and the Shy One can together muster, which is no mean overwhelmer in itself! For all the hot air and bluster, does it work in the long run, I wonder. People, I have begun to learn at last, want to understand and be convinced not browbeaten and silenced!
Guess Who-7? I thank my lucky stars that I jumped ship at the right time. It had become increasingly difficult to continue as the Chief talker for the party and the government against dictates of one's conscience. A lot of party activists and leaders who chose to throw their lot with the sinking ship that our regime has become, must now be ruing their opportunism. Eventually when the party is nearly sunk and when a new rejuvenated version hopefully emerges from the ashes, I could expect to be once again at the centre of things with erstwhile party stalwarts like the Barrister, the Doctor, BB's consort, and the artist-in-chief of the Eighteenth, amidst many other sidelined old faithfuls, once again flocking back to the party in a changed scenario. That looks to be more a question of "when" than "if".
Guess Who-8? What a mess! And it balloons by the hour! As if I have not my hands full already, with the fighting very conveniently "outsourced" to me by the elected civilian guys, I must also move with increasing frequency to keep them out of mischief and into obeying the law and doing something about corruption spiralling out of control! They keep doing stupid, corrupt and even dangerous things all the time: look how they rushed to place my secret service people under you-know-who last year, consider the near surrender of the first-strike option of big-bang by you-know-who, or acceptance of a money bill from the US with demeaning conditions attached, or rushing headlong into a potential bloodbath in the matter of restoration of Top Umpires.
These are only some of the brush fires (hazardous tomfooleries I call them?) I have managed to douse in time. On the top of all this is the top guy's unbelievable inaction against and remarkable tolerance for rampant corruption right under his nose. God knows what more I may have to do beyond my assignment proper to keep things on an even keel and even on the right side of sanity! It goes without saying that my people would rather fight the enemy across borders than engage with our own misdirected people.
Whose responsibility it is to convince our errant people of their errant ways and persuade them to accept and tread again the path of reason and peace? Certainly not mine! I am a soldier. My people are trained to fight and subdue the enemy. It is for the civilian men running the country to win the hearts and minds of errant people using the punch of the armed forces as a reserve tool to be used only as a last resort.
Here is where they are failing us totally. While we shed our blood, they are preoccupied with shenanigans, which should put any civilised society to shame! This cannot go on forever! I have made it quite clear in a troika meeting recently and wait to see whether anything happens before I make my next move. We are fast running out of time and options.
Guess Who-9? I suddenly see my opportunity after three years in wilderness. How have I fretted all these years remembering and reliving those years of absolute power and glory - a time when there was "No one to say me nay" as the poet said! Unlimited funds at hand, people bending over themselves to be seen doing my bidding. That was the scenario spread over eight long years. There was no reason why that would not have gone on forever except that I ran into a headstrong man who - surprise, surprise - would not bow before my mighty will as every one else had done for a near decade.
Neither offer of huge sums and glory abroad nor threats of dire consequences had the least effect on him. That was the one miscalculation, which was my undoing! Thus ended the days of glory for me, at least for the time being. It is strange that just as one man rocked my boat at that time, now another is now making possible my return to glory - the man who sits on the throne I once occupied! He has ended up making so many mistakes after a promising start and allowed corruption to balloon so out of control that people have started recalling some of the good things from my time like how much the dollar cost in rupees then or how much cheaper sugar then was.
The "return" is not going to be easy, however, as some of my worst decisions have begun to come back to haunt me. Like the midnight surprise gift, I gave to the emissary of my Patron by totally capitulating and accepting all his demands which, as it turned out, went beyond his own wildest expectations and took him and his boss, my Patron, by complete surprise. I also made the blunder of handing over hundreds of my countrymen - hands and feet bound - to my Patron on demand, no questions asked! I was even fool enough to brag about their "sale" of these Pakistanis to the Patron in my biography by speaking proudly of the money I got in return.
Pakistanis thus abandoned to the Patron were tortured in the most cruel ways science could device in the famous Bay torture house. There they found plenty of time, I am told, to curse me and to pray for my downfall. How shocking that my patron-in-chief abandoned me after all I had done for him? I had hoped he would remember my services and move to support me but in vain! There is a lot more I have to live down, not the least, the murder of Akbar Bugti and the massacre in Lal Masjid. My hopes now are pinned on the expectation that my people back home may have also forgotten the things I like to forget as well and also on the present ruler continuing his errant ways. Some hope!
(Concluded)
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