Of mentors & getting shafted
As Friar TuQ plans his return from Canada to Pakistan, he means to ruffle no feathers this time, given the fact that his “mentors” have ridden into the sunset. One acolyte, criticizing TuQ’s over-reliance on his “mentors” and getting shafted as a result, got an earful from the Friar. He said his original mentor was Abbaji, at whose knee he had learnt some essential “truths”, and to whose family he was priest confessor in Lahore for years. According to Friar TuQ, Abbaji once famously said that you only needed four men onside to come to power and stay there – all of them of the khaki variety, except for one, the Chief Adjudicator. Please note that this was in the good old days, when Pakistan was just coming out of the decade-long dictatorship of the late unlamented Tyrant Terry Thomas.
Great wit
Unbeknownst to most people, the Maulana is a great wit behind that large girth and bristling beard. A friend recently related some of the Maulana’s priceless witticisms. When a group of journalists met the Maulana after the latest, mercifully failed assassination attempt on him, he quipped, “Yes, thank God I survived, otherwise having to call me a ‘shaheed’ would’ve stuck in your throats!” At another time, a journo saw the Maulana staring long and hard at the Nation’s Founder’s portrait. “Ah yes”, sighed the Maulana, “yeh apnay waqt kay Moeen Qureshi thhay”. We’ve also heard that on his last trip to The Man of Steel’s office in Islamabad, the Maulana resisted while The Man insisted on seeing him off to the door of his car. Quipped the Maulana as he got into the car, “PM Sahab, I know why you’ve seen me off good and proper – so that I won’t be able to ask your staff to pull some strings on my behalf!”