Lunar Lunacy, Once Again

I tell you, thank God for Aisam-ul-Haq! Because even though he lost the mixed doubles finals at the US Open today, there was far more grace in his losing than in anything else that has been going on in Pakistan.

Another Eid, another moon-sighting controversy and another bunch of lunatic maulvis. I refer you to my post last year on the same issue, aptly titled "The Rot That is the Ruet." But while that particular post was about the sheer idiocy of the whole moon-sighting exercise - which continues unabated - today we have sunk to even further depths.

In case you were rightly and fortunately more engrossed in the tennis, here is the situation so far:

The Central Ruet-e-Hilal (Moon Sighting) Committee, tasked with looking for the moon in the sky throughout Pakistan, announced that the new moon had not been sighted anywhere in the country. Therefore Eid would take place day after, i.e. Saturday (incidentally, on 9/11), in Pakistan. Fair enough, though Saudi Arabia and a bunch of other countries will of course be celebrating it tomorrow (Friday) 'cause their 30 rozas are already up. This was pretty much in line with what the Met Office had already predicted, that it would be almost impossible to see the very, very faint new moon anywhere in Pakistan with the naked eye, particularly with its transient 'rising' and 'setting' times, except perhaps in the far reaches of Balochistan. But since nobody sighted it in Balochistan either, it was decided that the new moon was not visible.

Popalzai Live: eagle-eyed

Enter Masjid Qasim Khan in Peshawar and its rebel mullah Shahabuddin Popalzai. Like last year, he announces two or three hours after any scientific possibility of anyone seeing the moon, that the moon has been sighted all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province and therefore Eid would take place tomorrow. Also like last year, the KP senior minister Batshit Bashir Bilour (supposedly representing the secular ANP), then jumps into the fray to give his support to Shahabuddin and to announce that the province would officially observe Eid tomorrow. He justifies this bizarre announcement, which basically once again means that KP will officially celebrate Eid a day before the rest of Pakistan, under the excuse of provincial autonomy and that the provincial government must respect its own clerics. You know the 18th Amendment has got sidetracked when you hear such logic. WTF?

Of course this is not the first time people in KP seem to be on their own timeline. For some odd reason, the moon is far more visible in KP and Peshawar than anywhere to the west or east of them. But it doesn't end here. Baba Haider Zaman, the septuagenarian head of the Sooba Hazara Tehrik, which has been demanding that the Hazara region be separated from KP and made into a separate province, then decides to add his two bits and announces that the entire Hazara region in KP will not follow the provincial announcement and observe Eid according to the Central Ruet diktat.

So you now have one date (1st Shawwal) in all of KP tomorrow except for the Hazara region, while the rest of Pakistan will be on a different date (30th Ramzan) along with the Hazara region which incidentally is still part of KP. I was getting infuriated with the sheer lunacy of all this until it struck me that, in fact, this is a brilliant, brilliant turn of events. After all if every area, nay every mosque, can decide the date for itself, the logical progression has to be that every individual can decide the date as well. I think next year I will declare Eid whenever I think I've had enough of fasters' bad manners. It's every man (and woman) for themselves and after this precedent, who can challenge me?

On a more serious note, however, doesn't this lunacy perfectly encapsulate the total breakdown of state power and governance in Pakistan? Here we ponder how the state can extract more taxes from an intransigent elite, ensure provincial harmony or clamp down on terrorists, but really, the state cannot even find a consensus on a date.

As I said, thank God for Aisam. Maybe he should just moon these mullahs.

Waiting for Phet

The approaching cyclone in Karachi has got its residents in a state of dreaded anticipation and nervous excitement. To be sure, if the 'severe tropical cyclone' actually makes landfall as predicted by the Pakistan Met Office, its over 100 km + / hour winds and sea surge (waves) of 4-6 metres could do some serious damage given Karachi's fragile and crumbling infrastructure. Expect flooding, expect power to be knocked out, expect communications to be cut as telephone wires snap and mobile phone towers are damaged, expect a shortage of foodstuffs as supplies and transport are hindered, expect people to be killed by flying debris and electrocutions, expect the city to grind to a halt.

As things stood as of 11a.m. today (source: Pakistan Met Office)

What the approaching storm has shown also, however, is the inability of most of Pakistan's electronic media in not only grasping basic scientific concepts but also to read simple press releases. Not only did it initially not understand that meteorologists can only make predictions based on probability about the movement of the cyclone while it was still 1100 km away, it could not even grasp the idea of naming storms. So Geo at one point, about two days ago, was claiming that the cyclone would not hit Karachi even though the Met Office press release clearly stated that its predictions were for the cyclone to curve towards Karachi after initially moving in a north-west direction from Oman. And various channels were attributing the same cyclone as making landfall simultaneously in Gwadar in western Pakistan and Indian Gujarat in the east while sparing, bizarrely, Karachi and other Sindh coastal areas in between.

But the idea of naming storms with non-scientific names - quite a normal occurrence in the West - is what has really confused the hell out of some in Pakistan's media. The fact that the name has been coined by a regional storm watch centre and is actually a Thai word, "Phet", meaning 'Diamond' has not helped matters. So one reporter I heard on Aaj TV was earnestly telling viewers about how 'whichever country the Diamond cyclone has ever hit in history, has suffered great damage.' As if this particular cyclone is something that has existed forever and keeps being reborn periodically.

Even more confusing for the media and Pakistanis is the fact that "Phet" is apparently pronounced as 'pet' in Thai, which the Met office, to its credit, had been at pains to point out from the beginning. Geo managed to cotton on - even though written in Urdu it looks like they are talking about a tummy ('paet') - but not everyone has been as bothered about pronunciations. And of course some, such as the recently dormant punning headline makers at Express Tribune, just couldn't let it go without having some fun.

So, we had this story from yesterday, detailing that the cyclone, initially expected to make landfall today, would not get here till Sunday, headlined:

"Phet not, cyclone delayed to Sunday"

And today, we have:

"Thatta, Badin 'Phet-up' of the cyclone"

Here are some we could yet see in ET:

1. Headline for story about President Zardari directing local departments to make contigency preparations (he actually said this yesterday, did he really need to say it? If so, God help us): 'Make Preparations Phet-a Phat, Zardari Orders'

2. Headline for story about the sad state of coastal fishermen forced to stay away from their livelihoods for days: 'It's Always Our Phet, Say Dejected Fishermen'

3. Headline for story about DHA Phase 8 residents, most exposed to the cyclone among ET's target market because of the lack of developed surroundings: 'Phase 8 residents say 'Humari Phet Rahi Hai'


Good luck to all.