“Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” “Who said that?”

“John F Kennedy after the failure of the Bay of Pigs…”

“Don’t mention this to The Trainer.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Trainer Parveen Rashid – he couldn’t refer to a county in the UK because its name challenged his sensibilities and if you mention the Bay of Pigs…I mean the guy could simply…simply…”

“Stop, first it is Parvez Rashid so get that dratted keyboard fixed and second this phrase can be traced back to historian Tacitus once said, “this is an unfair thing about war: victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.”

“Well we are not in a war but…”

“But victory on the economic front has been declared by Ishaq Dar and for your information it’s his alone, I mean Miftah Ismail can go around criticizing the current state of the economy but the fact remains that everything is hunky dory and…”

“Hey I can no longer make ends meet.”

“That’s all due to external factors, nothing to do with Dar sahib.”

“The 50 rupee per litre tax that I pay on petrol, on my electricity bill the tax is more than 50 percent of the bill and…”

“Hey don’t be a whiner – you know and I know that Dar sahib is doing his utmost to work within the mandate given by his benefactor Nawaz Sharif and in priority terms it is as follows: strengthen the rupee….”

“Even if this results in a fall in remittances and…”

“Even if. And secondly, reduce inflation and need I add all inflation measures – Consumer Price Index, Core Inflation, Sensitive Price Index and Wholesale Price Index were down for November compared to October.”

“Wonderful and this after he doubled the levy on High Speed Diesel effective for the ongoing fortnight…”

“National Interest my friend and both should be in capital letters.”

“Did he bring back any…”

“Stop, the law allows for foreign nationals to keep money abroad, the law allows for foreign national children of Pakistani passport holders…”

“Indeed.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022