"What exactly is protocol?"
"To each, according to his relevance! The number of available cars, the number of available escort cars, an ambulance, the road blocks, the..."
"Relevance or the office he or she may hold."
"Same thing."
"But I am the recipient of daily press releases from the Ministry of Finance which detail all the Minister's visitors and...."
"Well, he is an important man you know, I mean he heads 35 plus committees and more chairmanships are on the way because Mian sahib reckons the cure for all ills is to set up a committee and since the number of ills is limitless in today's Pakistan..."
"Some of the committee members and heads are part of the problem and not part of the solution."
"Anyone that was selected by Mian sahib is not going to lose his job merely for non-performance my friend. That way lies acknowledgement of political weakness."
"But the soft coup everyone is talking of..."
"Mian sahib has voluntarily given away law and order as well as foreign policy to another institution..."
"Maybe he should give cricket to that institution also."
"Don't be facetious - cricket is being reformed as per plan, you may not agree with it."
"I give up, but anyway what I wanted to say was that I grew up suffering from leader's protocol, elected, non-elected, selected, whatever but what I can't understand is protocol extended to foreigners. If the head of a multilateral gets to see a minister then a press release is issued by the Ministry - my point is protocol-wise shouldn't the country head of a multilateral meet the Secretary rather than the Minister."
"That's almost sacrilege."
"It happens in other countries - I know of cases where the head of an entire department of a multilateral, an international bureaucrat, and not just a country head, was refused an appointment with anyone but his counterpart who obviously is a senior bureaucrat..."
"Dar sahib bows down to anyone who has any say, however small, in releasing loans."
"Ah yes, I forgot that, but surely the Secretary could..."
"Control my friend, its all about control."
"I guess, but the proverb a camel is a horse designed by a committee..."
"Not in our politics, for Mian sahib a lion (the party symbol) is a lemming, an animal that blindly follows its leader, though the Senate elections are giving him pause, for Zardari sahib a camel is a horse trader designed by the core committee, for Imran Khan a sixer trumps the horse and the horse trader though the ground is not oval though Imran has yet to realise it and..."
"Oh, don't be facetious."