Friday 23 October 2009

Chowq Loves Stuffing

Dear readers:

The following are the opening paragraphs from my 'QUTB-UD-DIN AIBAK' article that was published in HUMSAFAR magazine a few years ago.

In order to do Chowq a huge favour (they don't know how huge the favour really is), I re-wrote the article and sent it across to them. In their infinite wisdom (assume they actually have it), they killed it!

What are they afraid of, why do they continue to publish atheistic junk while killing readable material? These men (assume they are MEN) and women do know the answers to these simple questions.

Chowq is the 'final frontier' where no writer has gone before. I'll leave it up to the readers now to see what—if not the Chowq Stuffed's whims—brings on such repeated bans.

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QUTB-UD-DIN AIBAK:

They do not make men like that anymore. Qutb-ud-deen Aibak was a real Sultan, the creator of the famous Qutub Minar of Delhi. He was a lover who literally fell for polo, wounding himself mortally while playing the noble game. Today, various polo clubs, grounds, and tournaments named after Aibak, acknowledge his patronage of the sport.

In order to put my feet on the road for this story, I had to do what the Green Fairy had instructed me in a dream. All that I was required to do to reach the desired street was to take a mouth-refreshing tablet that she had left under my pillow; it had a hole in the middle and bore the majestic game’s name over it.

With the tablet moving about in my mouth, suddenly there was no shortage of routes to take to reach Aibak’s mausoleum in Lahore. The famous Anarkali bazaar route via Neela Goumbad could have provided great comfort to my male pedestrian eyes but I rejected the idea in order to preserve the sanctity of the semi-holy mission. I could have reached the mausoleum journeying via Circular Road but I disliked round about methods. Instead, after a belly-filling stop at Gawalmandi’s Food Street, and without contracting Diarrhoea, I safely went past the Mayo Hospital to reach the most politically correct street ever named by the Lahore Municipal Committee: Aibak Street.

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PS: Now do you know the reason why I call Chowk Staff 'Chowq Stuffed'?

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