Pakistan Zindabad!

There is one event in Pakistan every year, that makes me think the same thing every time. This event is the annual budget that is presented in front of the national assembly and usually telecast live. I haven't been bothered to see it for a very very long time. The reason I bring that up is that the first time I watched this event on the telly was when there was a ruckus by the opposition while it was being presented. For somebody who grew up in the years of Zia, dissent on television was unheard of, so it had novelty.

Anyway, the budget of the country was presented again a few days ago. Please forgive the capriciousness of this post, I will keep going off on tangents. I wonder what qualifies the gentleman that we have as the current Minister of Finance other than the fact that his last couple of names are the same as an erstwhile dictator. He did get an MBA from GW. But that is a slippery slope, lets not go there. He was the only one available with a bachelor's degree at the time of elections in that part of motherland.

Lets not worry about the droopy mustache for now, and get back to the budget. As long as I can remember, the response to the budget is always the same. The people in power proclaim it as the best thing that ever happened, and the opposition thinks the opposite. I am ashamed to say that despite having a dubious degree in Economics, I have no idea what drives economies and finances. It always makes me wonder why there aren't any qualified people out there who can objectively look at the budget and point out its strengths and weaknesses. Or maybe it is always left vague with wishful thinking, so everyone can go back to whatever they were doing right before it happened.

That was the premise of this post. I don't know anything about economics but when I hear about how well Pakistan's economy is doing by FL and Shortcut and everyone else, I get confused. The reasons for my confusion are as follows

• We have a serious shortage of power. The whole country is going nuts at this point with blackouts and "load-shedding"
• State Bank is saying that we haven't been able to meet our targets in terms of inflation
• We have foreign reserves of 15 billion dollars, cant we spend some of that money to generate power for our "exploding" economy?

There, I just went ahead and displayed my total lack of understanding of how money works. Maybe this is just a ploy by FL to make everyone understand why we need to build Kalabagh Dam. That's probably it.

I am so glad that the minister for tourism has been sent packing, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I wonder if two wrongs make a right. I am pretty sure they don't. This lady was the epitome of unquestioning loyalty to her masters and paid the price for it. Although I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't also believe in whatever she did. Totally validates my lack of faith in my fellow human beings. Her replacement is better looking...

I am sitting here looking out my window and its raining, the temperature is about 12 degrees and I wish that all summers are like this. I will miss the weather, but the load-shedding beckons.

Films in languages that I don't understand

I recently went to the theatre to watch a film called Dans Paris. It wasn't an attempt to be more "culchaah'ed" than I really am (because I am very much so), the experience of watching a film in a language that I don't understand is like visiting a foreign country. A few months earlier, I went to watch Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), which was not only in German, but also set in the 80's in East Germany. Brilliant movie, if I may say so.

I an going off on a tangent here, please bear with me.

I saw the latter twice, the interesting part was that the sub-titles were different. The subtle, and in places not-so-subtle, differences changed the whole essence of the movie. At least for me. So I deduce from this the fact that my forays in foreign unknown language films will always be influenced by who is writing the sub-titles. And more importantly, I should only watch the movie only once or that if I choose to watch it over and over again, I should stick to the same version. Either that, or I learn the language enough to understand it. Or then again, my understanding of something will always be subjective and change, regardless of the language it is written in.

Back to Dans Paris. I loved it. It was like visiting France for me, or any other planet for that matter. My life is insular at best, having lived in three different continents, I don't think I have experienced life outside of me. I exist within my head and its only with literature or film, that I get a glimpse of what life is like for others. Its not something that I am proud of, that's just how it is.

So this excursion into an unfamiliar society was exciting and a part of me grudgingly accepted or saw the reason why some people like watching Indian films. Its an alternative reality and the reason why I can't be bothered to watch an Indian film is because I cannot make it believable for me. Regardless of whether there are any Parisians who live like the ones in Dans Paris, I can believe that they do.

I will miss the cinema when I go back home.