Log In | Register
Billa is the local Urdu word for Tomcat. Tomcats as you know are notorious for their lack of morals, ethics and loyalty. Billa is also the nickname in Punjabi for someone with tomcat-like grey eyes and again such people are considered shifty and unreliable—wrongly of course. Tomcats are tomcats and people are people—the Billa epithet notwithstanding.
These days we are being regaled by the unseemly sights and sounds of people spilling their guts in front of TV anchors employed by a commercial and sensation oriented media. In fact there seems to be a competition of sorts among the anchors 'to do more'. What is amazing is that the Army fighting and dying on the western border is forgotten as is the fact that a resurgent TTP has struck thrice in three days with major attacks and that Al Qaeda has struck in the heart of the security apparatus of Saudi Arabia. Nobody is analyzing these developments.
The fact that the people raking up the past in an obviously orchestrated campaign are former ISI operatives and senior military officers makes the entire spectacle nauseating. Billa the apt nickname for the chief deep throat type informant has become synonymous with sleaze, ratting on colleagues, and disloyalty to ones own institution and being the paid front of a murky group. The trail of slime that this character is leaving is shameful. He is not above naming those who have inspired him to speak the truth after years of silence. He is oblivious to the hordes fighting for sugar and flour in an artificially induced price war and those being driven mad with power outages during Ramadhan. So are the senior figures exposing their feet of clay.
No one doubts that more will join the fray because self takes priority over everything else in this no holds barred environment.
The Al-Qaeda and Taliban must be laughing. The Indians must be gleefully lapping up every utterance for future use. The US and the others supporting us must be flabbergasted. The Saudis are sending special planes to London to bring people for dinner with the King---are they signaling a message?
The invitees think so and are grasping at it with desperation.
Ahsan Waheed
