Comedy Nights with Imran Season 1: A recap of Pak’s post Art-370 humour special

Title: Comedy Nights with Imran Khan – a post Article 370 special

Star Cast: Imran Khan, Abdul Basit, Shireen Mazari, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, Rehman Malik

Cameos: Johnny Sins, UNO Card Game, United Nations, The Vatican

Synopsis: A neighbour loses his mind over his neighbour’s decision.  

Rating: Five out of five

On August 5, 2019 the Modi-Shah regime set the clock forward in the Indian sub-continent by moving to abrogate Article 370 – a temporary piece of legislation - that lasted so long that it gave strict competition to Elizabeth’s tenure as Queen of England.

While it sent shockwaves around newsrooms, the global community’s reaction barring China and an atavist Britain – highly ironic given their inability to deal with a simple referendum which has seen off two PMs – has shown that PM Modi hasn’t spent the last five years simply making NRIs feel warm in packed gatherings.

The global leaders from diverse countries from Israel to Russia to even Islamic ones like UAE and Saudi Arabia have more or less toed the Indian line on Jammu and Kashmir. The hilarious fallout has been the Pak establishment’s reaction whose ‘Kashmir Banega Pakistan’ propaganda – a nation-holding glue as important to them as the Old Glory is to US and the Crown is to UK – was decimated.

In fact, the Pak establishment’s general response shows us why the nation has produced gems like Taher Shah. The Pak establishment has reacted like a headless chicken, a Red Pill unable to accept a new reality.  

From news channels to Pak trolls, the reaction has been a masterclass that makes every stand-up special on Netflix look tame by comparison.

It hasn’t been a solo act. It has involved everyone in the Pak establishment including the President, the PM, a coterie of ministers and a host of actors. It has also had inadvertent cameos by porn stars, the Vatican, beloved card game UNO and the United Nations.

Perhaps one should be glad that there’s a communication blockade in Kashmir, which means that at least the denizens won’t know the travesty that has been carried out across the border in its name.

Imran Khan – bestowed the sobriquet ‘Im the Dim’ by his critics, has spent the last month tweeting like a teenage boy who just discovered Arundhati Roy. Khan, who a month before Article 370 was abrogated kept on hoping Modi would talk to him, seems to have suddenly undergone a refresher Rapidex course in ‘rising fascist Hindutva’.

It takes a special sense of self-delusion to lecture India on human rights when one is the puppet PM of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which houses some of the world’s most-known terrorists and was also the abode of 9/11 kingpin Osama Bin Laden.

From an NYT propaganda piece masquerading as an opinion editorial (which makes one slightly sympathetic to Trump’s charges of ‘fake news’) to shooting one’s own critical economy in the foot by adding 30 minutes of unproductivity every Friday by deciding that proverbial stand-up act would become literal.  Sane-headed Pakistanis, in fact, took great umbrage to the additional burden of not being able to move for thirty minutes every Friday. Khan also, thanks to sheer number of times he reminded the world that Pakistan had nuclear weapons, managed to nearly change Pakistan’s nuclear policy and the Pak Foreign Office had to give a clarification.

Khan hasn’t provided the hilarity alone.

Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister – an oxymoron if there ever was one - Shireen Mazari even wrote to the United Nations asking them to ban Priyanka Chopra as UN ambassador because of something she tweeted in February!

 The UN replied saying an ambassador was allowed to have personal views, perhaps because it wouldn’t behove the organisation to write ‘Chalo aage bado’.  She also spoke to the Vatican officials about the ‘situation in IOK’, and discussed Christians in Pak, which would perhaps have led to some rather uncomfortable questions about Christians being wrongfully charged under the nation’s draconian blasphemy laws.

Then we’ve had Rehman Malik, a man who was disqualified by the Pak SC for his dual citizenship, tagging popular card game UNO and asked them to take action against the ‘brutalities of IOK’.

Not to be outdone was Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, the country’s Railways Minister who threatened India saying they had ‘125-250 gm atom bombs’, predicted a war to finish it all in by October-November, spent some time fighting with Indian meme-makers and literally got a shock after mentioning Modi’s name during Kashmir Hour.

But the coup de grace of this divine comedy was provided by former Pak envoy to India Abdul Basit first claiming that he sought to influence public opinion in India by getting an article written by Shobha De, a claim vehemently denied by the columnist and which left the rest of India scratching its head in amusement.

Surely it was a fast fall from the notorious era ISI agent Ghulam Nabi Fai – bagged by FBI in the US  in 2011– if Pak establishment has to reach out to Shobha De to bolster public opinion in India.

But Basit wasn’t done and went as far as to confuse porn star Johnny Sins was a ‘a Kashmiri blinded by pellets’, which led to an epic reply from Sins himself who assured Basit that his ‘vision was fine’.It has made India’s task easier on the whole.

In general, political and diplomatic tussles are based on pinpointing the utterances of the biggest fool in the group, the proverbial slow buffalo in the herd and claiming it’s the view of the entire group to demolish them. Leaders like Trump and Modi have done it with devastating effect, taking the views of an AOC or a Sam Pitroda to paint both grand old parties as out-of-touch.

Yet, for Pakistan it simply hasn’t been needed, given the entire establishment has behaved like the slowest buffalo in the herd.

In fact, one can say with a great degree of certitude that if Imran Khan and his minister’s conversations were recorded live, they’d easily give the British classic Yes Minister a run for its money. And all fans of the genre will be glad to know that Khan has promised a ‘fullest possible response’, which can only mean that Season 2 will be even better.