Budget blues, PC fallout & a writer’s death

By Afzal Hussain Bokhari

Regardless of whether someone in the house paid any attention, the sky-blue headdress on Minister of State for Finance Hina Rabbani Khar looked graceful.

PML-N MNA, Khwaja Mohammad Asif turned around in his seat and chatted with those sitting behind him. Some women members leafed through the book titled 'Budget 2009-10' and pretended to feel updated.

Traditional critics like Ahsan Iqbal, with an oblique reference to former PM Shaukat Aziz, brushed aside the document as a plethora of 'Citibank' statistics but the minister of state delivered the budget speech with the confidence that had its origins in the Dera Ghazi Khan brand of feudalism.

The rate of inflation in the country stood around 26 per cent and the government employees were told that from July 1, they might be given a 15 per cent 'interim' raise in their salaries/pensions.

Hina Rabbani Khar has been associated with the team of economic experts picked jointly by former president General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf. It was, therefore, with a sense of amusement that people received her satirical remarks about the 'wrong economic policies of the previous government'.

The analysts said that the budget did not endeavour to widen the tax net in the country. The government was just tightening the noose further around the neck of those already paying the tax.

Though very few people had ever seen the elected representatives distributing money among the daughters of the deserving parents yet the minister of state announced that the amount of 'wedding assistance' for marriageable poor girls would be increased from Rs50,000 to 70,000.

The lovers of cell phone sets got the tiding that the activation charges of a new mobile phone connection would be reduced from Rs500 to 250. The move might not be workable over a long period of time but the government announced to impose 16 per cent of sales tax on the advertisements of newspapers.

Well-deserved was the award of security men on duty on the western front who were promised an instant allowance equivalent to the basic salary for one month.

Just a few days before the budget blues, the residents of Peshawar had the worst shock of their lives when they saw the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel come down like a house of cards on the heads of the guests. The sense of fear and insecurity was at its peak.

Very much new to scenes of death and destruction, the two frightened airhostesses covered their nose to escape the dust, smoke and fumes and made their way out of the ill-fated hotel. They were so quick to leave the hotel that media reporters initially said they had gone missing.

The worst to suffer were the security guards who either got shot by the intruders or were buried under the debris alive. Some were taken out in a badly disfigured condition and rushed to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital or the Combined Military Hospital in a state of shock.

Being a retired army man, Haji Said Akbar, for instance, served as a guard in the hotel. He was inside the five-storey building when the suicide bombers struck just before midnight. His brothers were about to retire to bed when they heard of the blast in Garhi Ghulab Khan near the Ring Road Bridge on GT Road.

They rushed to the place and tried to figure out if any of the dusty faced victims happened to be their brother. Before they presumed him dead, someone from the management told them that he had been sent to the hospital. First in the LRH and later in CMH, he has been receiving guests who made it to the hospitals to inquire after his health.      

Meanwhile, at the scene of the blast many of the eyewitnesses vaguely recalled the lines from Iftikhar Arif's poetry that so aptly described the common man's dilemma: "Jahan bhonchal bunyad-i-faseel-o-dar main rehtay hain, Hamara hosla dekho, hum aisay ghar main rehtay hain!" 

The sudden disappearance some days back from literary scene of Akhunzada Mukhtar Ali Nayyar has further added to the overall sadness which has gripped the city over the past some time. It is indeed amazing how the mysteriously operating, cruel and invisible hand of death has taken away from us almost in quick succession writers like Farigh Bokhari, Raza Hamadani, Khatir Ghazanavi, Ahmad Faraz and Ashraf Bokhari to name just five of them. Nayyar showed due respect to all of them and never tried to outsmart or outshine any of them.

Like his illustrious father Akhunzada Mumtaz Ali, Nayyar too had a flair for the stage and the pulpit. He had an expressive style and lovably theatrical mannerism. He never went to a social gathering until he was sure that he was impeccably dressed. A jet black 'sherwani', a neatly done turban with both ends well-starched and ironed and the unmistakably manly moustache that lent conviction to whatever he said.

Out of a total of seven, Akhunzada Anwar Ali was probably the most outspoken, fearless and blunt of Nayyar's brothers. At times, the friends and well-wishers advised him to mellow down. Some time back, armed men ambushed and assassinated him.

In the early 1980s, I interviewed Nayyar for the newspaper when he lived on Dalazak Road. He was selective about his food and drinks as he had symptoms of diabetes.

Later, we met when he moved to a bigger, personal house located at the confluence of Nishtarabad and Hussainabad. Out of love and as a sign of endearment, he addressed me as 'Aghaji'. His affection was always overwhelming.

Lean and thin just like Nayyar, his son Zahid Ali Askar briefly worked for the Urdu service of Radio Tehran. Probably for a better package and a slightly relaxed atmosphere, Askar later switched over to the Peshawar branch of a Gulf-based bank.

The last work of Nayyar - Peshawar ki Imambargahain and noha-khwan - was bought and read by a select group of men and women. Some of the male and female noha-khwans felt indebted to Nayyar that details about them got documented in a book form.