Dear PTV,

It was after reading a few news reports about some protest demonstrations in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that one turned to YouTube to watch a comedy show aired by one of your many channels on the Eid day. The demonstrations were by and large low key and lackadaisical. The protesters merely wanted to vent their anger at some poetry recited in the said show on the grounds of it being insulting towards the Pakhtuns.

Humour being an important genre in literature, one thought the protests might well be unwarranted as making lighter fun of the people’s eccentricities and peccadilloes could not be perceived to be of and with malicious intent, and hence the comedy show ought to be watched to have some moments of good fun. One also thought that PTV, with its more than half a century of life, must have come of age one proof of which was the production of programmes like ‘The Classics Show,’ being telecast by PTV World. Another reason for thus being so sanguine was the gender of the state minister of information and the air of dignity surrounding her charming personality.

All such hopes were, however, dashed to the ground after watching the Eid comedy poetry show under the banner of ‘Hansna mana hay.’ The title of the show appeared to be apt for there appeared to be nothing even remotely connected to the beautiful art of humour in it that could induce a smile or a grin leave alone laughter. And yet both the host as well as the audience looked to have been seized with such fits of laughter as if the poet was reading out from a long list of side-splitting jokes. By all means, the poet called Jawad Hussain appeared to be little versed in the subject that he was pretending to have mastered as the quality of the poetry, laced and loaded with unrestrained spite as it was, never rose above the pedestrian level.

About humour, Lucy Maud Montgomery said, ‘it is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes, but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.’ Pakhtuns have always been the butt of jokes, and lo and behold, to their eternally joyful nature, they have always enjoyed being joked about with such relish. PTV in particular has been continuously making fun of the peculiar gender-free accent in which Pakhtuns communicate in Urdu language. The PTV playwrights have never raised the Pakhtun profile beyond that of a blundering watchman and a country bumpkin, and yet the disparaging treatment has elicited or provoked little response other than the raising of a few eyebrows.

PTV could be called for tens of other blemishes when it comes to neglecting the Pakhtuns and presenting them through the skewed lens of its cameras. Celebrating Eid has got as much to do with a people’s culture as it aims to portray their religious beliefs. Thus, whenever Pakhtuns celebrate their Eid one day ahead of the rest of the country PTV ignores the event and censors it up as if this was some kind of a rebellious political statement that must not be allowed to be heard and seen.

But never before had PTV crossed the line of decency with such unexplained indiscretion as it appears to have done now in the case of Jawad Hussain on the auspicious occasion of Eid. It was ridiculous to see a state organ allowing itself to be used by someone with a facetious agenda. If ever there was need for an inquiry in PTV affairs, it couldn’t have matched the urgency as it does now. If the PTV bosses want evidence, here it is.

Jawad Hussain did not hide behind double entendre. Whatever he said in his highly scandalous verses signified in plain words that Pakhtuns were the beneficiaries of terrorism as they used the sand blown from the mountains by the bomb blasts for their needs. In very lucid words, and to the applause of the audience, Jawad said that Pakhtuns were smugglers and smuggling was a way of life with them.

Not content with such innuendoes, the maliciously charged poet said that the body odour wafted from the Pakhtuns was like that of sheep because they would take only one bath in a year on the occasion of Eid. Since he would stop at nothing, PTV’s blue-eyed poet said that Pakhtuns were such bad singers that they knew little about the finer points of music. And to cap it all with a predictable couplet about the snuff called ‘naswar,’ Jawad disclosed that a Pakhtun had informed him that no one could claim to be a man enough unless and until he used the said intoxicant.

PTV has never expiated for its years of unprovoked sins against the unwary and indeed gullible Pakhtuns. But the sheer weight of the present sin, nay crime, needed to be thrown at the PTV headquarters in an epistle with a quote from Booker T. Washington that says: “Dignify and glorify common labour. … it is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.” It is the body odour of the Pakhtun labourers from across the Durand Line that we owe all the construction to and not to the mediocrities masquerading as developers.

Yours truly,

An aggrieved Pakhtun

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2017