Kirkit Again
01 May 2017
The man’s name in its uncorrupted form is actually لاڑا which means bridegroom in Punjabi. I don’t know when this blighter got married – or even if he ever did – but it’s a bit of an overkill to continue to call himself bridegroom all the time. If he is not married, I suspect a deep longing for the event to occur in his life. And if he is married the man is bloody suicidal. I suppose he has converted to the one and only true faith.
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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گھاس کی شرح نمو
12 March 2016
میری یہ بات لوگوں کے لیے بے حد نفرت انگیز ہوتی ہے اس لیے میں دوبارہ کہوں گا کہ مجھے کرکٹ سے نفرت ہے۔ یاد رہے کہ میں برسات کی نم آلود اور شبنمی راتوں میں 'کرررررر' کی آواز نکالنے والے کرکٹ (جھینگر) کی بات نہیں کر رہا۔
میں اس کھیل کی بات کر رہا ہوں جسے میں کھیل ہی نہیں سمجھتا۔ اس میں چند پاگل لوگ سفید لباس پہن کر تپتے سورج تلے کئی گھنٹے بلکہ کئی دن (شاید ہفتوں؟) بے حس و حرکت کھڑے رہتے ہیں۔ ان میں سے دو نے 'تھاپا' اٹھا رکھا ہوتا ہے۔ یہ اس ڈنڈے جیسی چیز ہے جس سے خواتین واشنگ مشین کی ایجاد سے پہلے کپڑے دھونے کا کام لیتی تھیں۔ جب واشنگ مشین ایجاد ہوئی تو یہ تھاپا بیکار ہو گیا۔ اسی دوران یہ سست اور نکمے لوگوں کے ہاتھ لگ گیا جو اس سے گیندیں پیٹنے کا کام لینے لگے۔
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Secret Cricket Deals
04 March 2016
Mohammad Yusuf is a nice, fortyish man who drives a taxi. I’ve known him for twenty years, he is accessible by cell phone and he always drives me to the airport. He is generally punctual except when he has fare just before he is supposed to pick me up. Then if I phone to ask where he is, he’ll say he’s only five minutes away. In reality he’ll be, say, thirty minutes off.
But that was just to introduce the good man. When he drives he sometimes begins a little conversation and because he loves cricket (that non-game they play with oars and six sticks in which you can gamble and win if you lose), he is chattier when the game is on. Which, incidentally, is always; the whole year round. As my sister asked me on the phone from Canada, ‘Is this silly cricket thing on again?’ She believed that as it used to be in the old days, they played only when the weather was good. And I had to tell her it is now never off. There’s too much money to be made by venal fixers (read players).
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posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Cricket
10 September 2014
This piece appears in the September 2014 issue of Herald
Two of them carry the thhapa, that short club that women used to beat the dirt out of their laundry. But that was before they invented washing machines. And since with this invention the thhapa became redundant, it was put to other use by ne’er to well loafers: they took to flogging balls with it. Cricket was invented and life was never the same again.
Read more »Labels: Cricket, Herald, Humour, Society
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Oh no, not cricket again
16 September 2013
This article appeared in The News on Sunday 1 November 1998 when a world cup was about to start – or was already being played. Reproduced here for the reading displeasure of all cricket lovers
The number of people I exasperate with my utter illiteracy in matters of cricket is endless. But, it must be conceded, that I simply do not see the point of the game. How can I when they say it’s a ‘silly point’? If you ask me, it’s not just a point that’s silly; the whole caboodle is exasperatingly absurd. What’s the sense in a game with a couple of geriatrics in white coats and bunch of good for nothing loafers who, if they had any sense at all, would get in out of the midday sun?
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On second thought, it is perhaps because of having been out in the sun rather too long that these men are the way they are. I mean, whoever in their right minds would get into clean white clothes and stand in the blazing sun the whole day long throwing a red ball a couple of times this way and that, while two other nutters saunter about between two sets of upright sticks. Meanwhile, for excitement the TV cameras pan the empty stands and show the grass growing (which grows faster than the runs come) and the vultures overhead. The vultures obviously waiting for the geriatrics to drop dead. Worse, I fear the vultures fooled by the aggressive inactivity on the ground, take the players to be a bunch of cadavers.
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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