Caesar’s Senate: Thou Fashion Industry

“Cry Hav­oc! And Let Slip the Dogs of War”. This immor­tal phrase of Julius Cae­sar has main­tained its shine for over cen­turies and why not, for the phrase con­cise­ly with­holds a vol­cano of human emo­tions. Joy, fury, vex­a­tion, bel­liger­ence and what not. Julius Cae­sar in this phrase inci­sive­ly poured his heart out for what he had and what he was just about to achieve.

A while ago this phrase came to life in a coun­try with lit­tle affec­tion for either Cae­sar or Shake­speare as mod­el turned singer Ayyan Ali was arrest­ed at Benazir Bhut­to Inter­na­tion­al Air­port Islam­abad and many in this land of for­tunes “Cried Hav­oc and did Slip Their Dogs of War”. In an infantry with lit­tle arse­nal ‘tongue’ is a sub­sti­tute for swords, hors­es, ele­phants and yes ‘dogs’, so all of us jubi­lant­ly let lose our tongues on that bloody immoral, unpa­tri­ot­ic yet ‘hot’ offend­er.

The moral baton of our soci­ety – the super sanc­ti­mo­nious media, which was then not busy lec­tur­ing us about the for­eign pol­i­cy dimen­sions vis-a-vis mid­dle east, down­loaded all the flashy Bol­ly­wood item songs like Kiun Paisa Paisa Kar­ti Hai and Baby Doll Mein Sone Di and made exhil­a­rat­ing pack­ages about the mod­el to grab as much eye balls as pos­si­ble. Tough Ayyan’s walk in a base­ball cap and hood­ie with Baby Doll Mein Sone Di in the back­ground was enough to stick mil­lions to the tele­vi­sion sets yet a 5‑minute item in the news hour was not enough to slake the lust of the mass­es. So then arrived the Sher­lock Holmes styled “inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism” which divulged it all. From ‘fresh’ juice the prison author­i­ties had bestowed upon this Cleopa­tra to ounces she had gained in prison all was excep­tion­al­ly sniffed and dug out by either our print or elec­tron­ic media reporters but they were just not good enough to roll the heads and so came in the anchors or actu­al­ly the anchor per­sons the most sparkling rubies of our media. No mat­ter whether the talk show’s theme was ter­ror­ism, edu­ca­tion reforms or nation­al secu­ri­ty, in about three to four min­utes some thick mus­tache bob­by would grin and say Sir Zara Ayyyyaaaannnn ki baat kar lein and good bye to the sub­ject at hand. Begin­ning by the ‘dis­clo­sure’ that mon­ey belonged to Asif Ali Zardari, Lyari Gang War or some ex-min­is­ter, the fantab­u­lous com­men­tary went on to edu­cate us how Ayyan Ali wooed wealthy goons to pay for her lips and nose job. In between Zardari and the Nose Job, some Maulana would tell us about how immoral­i­ty is des­tined to meet destruc­tion, some socio-eco­nom­ic growth advi­sor would con­clude that unem­ploy­ment is due to Ayyan and MMS fame Meera would tell us how she knew it all along that Mod­els are involved in mon­ey laun­der­ing (by the way what became of poor Atiq-ur-Rehman’s kothi).

In the course of this cap­ti­vat­ing cov­er­age and expert com­men­tary ‘Chas­ka’ was at its max­i­mum. With dailies print­ing head­lines as Hus­san Ki Devi Ki Naaz Bar­dar­i­an and Ayyan’s Walk of Shame, the expert com­men­ta­tors on the tele­vi­sion bab­bled Ayyan Phir Sirf …. Ki Tu Ladli Nahin Na, Ayyan Ki Chaal Ke Peche …. Ki Chaal Hai , Ayyan Ka Husn Phir Aur Kis Din Kaam Aye Ga and when on her lat­est hear­ing the mod­el girl wore a burqa at the dis­trict courts a prophet­ic TV chan­nel ran Allah Meri Tau­ba in the back­ground and told us as of how two days in jail have brought this uneth­i­cal crea­ture to Sir­at-e-Mus­taqeem.

The log­ic of media pun­dits always seemed anom­alous to me; for exam­ple why would Zardari the head of the rul­ing par­ty in Sindh where him, his chief min­is­ter, min­is­ters, advi­sors all use the VVIP lounge at Karachi Air­port, where him and his chief min­is­ter get dri­ven right up to the air­craft at the run­way where his brief­cas­es and hand bags are nev­er sub­ject­ed to inspec­tion and where his grip remains firm at the sys­tem would give his beloved mon­ey to Ayyan Ali to be smug­gled out of the coun­try via Islam­abad. But then of course where did the Sur­rey Man­sion come from had Ayyan not laun­dered the mon­ey? What? The Sur­rey Man­sion was bought in 1996 when Ayyan was about 6 or 7. Umm­m­mm, well Nazia Has­san must have laun­dered it then and so Zardari gave her Polo­ni­um 210 thus she died of can­cer. Take That! Same trou­bles me with gang war crim­i­nals. Instead of using Hun­di or Hawala, the estab­lished mech­a­nisms of mon­ey laun­der­ing, why did they hand over their hard earned rich­es to Ayyan Ali but hell do we care whether there exists any case or not for what we seek out of Ayyan is Chas­ka and for that sup­ply chain is work­ing just fine.

I do not have time enough for either this hyp­o­crit­i­cal soci­ety, sex­ist good for noth­ing ‘ana­lysts’ or third grade media for com­ment­ing upon them is noth­ing but waste of good time. Let them enjoy trend­ing #Save­Shafqat and #Hang­Shafqat as we put all avail­able skills into to play to demean, ridicule and dis­man­tle Ayyan Ali, let us make as much cheesy misog­y­nis­tic remarks as we can on this hot girl, let us hurl as pos­si­ble abus­es as we can in print and on-air, let us assure if she does walk free of those charges the despi­ca­ble soul doesn’t have a life left.

In this strug­gle to cleanse the soci­ety of evil I do won­der where is my vic­tims breed. In a coun­try where no mat­ter what fraud a lawyer com­mits his kith and kin are there to ral­ly around him, no mat­ter which buf­fa­lo injec­tion a doc­tor injects into a child killing him, his tribe is there to protest for him, no mat­ter how cor­rupt a clerk may be his flock flies with him in cri­sis, in this coun­try there was not but a sin­gle fee­ble sigh for Ayyan Ali. The Fash­ion Indus­try as they now call them­selves remained mum for the larg­er part. When asked by media to share their sen­ti­ments, pun­dits and fash­ion­istas like Mohsin Say­eed, Sadia Khan and Too­ba Sidiqqui make tongue in cheek remarks like “The whole Indus­try should not be blamed due to one person’s action” and “There are good and bad peo­ple every­where”. None in this Indus­try stood up for a Labor of theirs. No one expects the sis­sy boys or social but­ter­flies to have the guts of lawyers or doc­tors but puny voice of sane sol­i­dar­i­ty was not too much to ask for “We don’t think she is of the sort” “the tri­al must con­clude the facts” or some­thing. Nei­ther a fan nor a per­vert I still feel pity for poor Ayyan Ali for in the quest to join the Fash­ion Indus­try she joined but the Caesar’s Sen­ate where every com­rade holds a drag­ger beneath the robe ready to stab. With Maulanas, Ghairat-Brigade and nation­al­ists already against this west­ern­ized unscrupu­lous Indus­try and with that amount of cohe­sion amongst the com­rades, one won­ders if the Fash­ion Indus­try is des­tined to meet the fate met by the Caesar’s Sen­ate.