“Is it true that Shehbaz Sharif is going to go to London to confer with his brother on when to select the next army chief?”

“I am not sure but that is what Fawad Chaudhry said and Fawad Chaudhry is an honourable man.”

“Ahhhh!”

“Why the long sigh?”

“Reminded me of the refrain used repeatedly and albeit extremely effectively by Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, remember when he was allowed to address the public by the assassins that included Brutus by the way and he kept referring to Brutus as an honourable man.”

“Ooooopsey daisy.”

“What?”

“That was a rather dangerous statement you made…”

“What did I say? I simply cited Shakespeare the master of the English language…”

“Oh shush, we Pakistanis have become adept at using…using is it ijtihad or its opposite taqlid (imitation) or ijma…”

“Hey these are legal terms and I am not a legal person…anyway my question stands, is Shehbaz Sharif really going to London to confer with his brother…”

“Why not? Considering that Nawaz Sharif has a hat trick in appointing….”

“You being facetious?”

“No I mean he may have learned a lesson that I mentioned yesterday — an aspirant to a job is not going to act the same way as an incumbent and…”

“I can say it definitively that Mian sahib ain’t learnt no lesson, he is still dedicated to making the same mistakes as before to prove that he was actually right when he made that decision previously.”

“Well as you say an incumbent acts differently to an aspirant then perhaps the better lesson learned is to modify your own behaviour till such a time as you can change the status quo…”

“See that applies the other way around too: once you become the prime minister then you begin to act differently to when you were an incumbent.”

“Ah but we are not a nation that learns lessons.”

“No indeed.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022