CONVERSATION

The Art of Conversation 

'Everything in moderation, including moderation.'

Oscar Wilde 

Dear readers,

Apart from being a cliché, the above title sounds pretty professorial. No disrespect is meant to the professors. I mean I cannot dare wear the mantle of a professor because I have never been one.

After having come to know from the statistics that you are still visiting my blog, I thought to start a conversation where we can talk on topics that interest us. You can post your conversations or tidbits from the same either in the comments space or email the same to me at nasseryousaf@gmail.com for posting the same in this thread without editing.

Conversation cannot or should not be expected to be didactic; it may then prove to be soporific, inducing headache 😎.

I am just trying to create a forum where we can share our conversations that we normally hold in our groups. 

Conversations cannot be called conversations if not candid. It doesn't help to be pretentious, charlatan, self-righteous, because one will be exposed sooner than later. 

I remember working as an advisor in the then Frontier's Public Service Commission tasked with recruiting civil officers as section officers etc in 2004-5. I was present in the interviews of more than 400 candidates. I remember the faces of quite a few of them presently working in higher grades. 

I am not sorry to say some of them didn't give a good account of themselves because I could literally see them wearing the mantle of self-righteousness. They, however, got selected. I mean they proved themselves to be the best mediocres 🤣 which was what they were required to be. 

Have you seen any landmark of development in this province during the last about 20 years, or more precisely since the beginning of the millennium? Apart from the ill-conceived BRT which has irreparably disfigured Peshawar's landscape, what else is there? We can discuss that. 

The days of ideological, religious, nationalist etc politics are over. People want peace of mind and access to basic necessities for themselves and their wards. And here we see the charlatans leading them through blind alleys which lead to nowhere. 

We can talk here about literature, economy, history, climate, tourism, culture, anthropology, music, health, education, development and lack thereof and in fact everything under the sun as the cliché idiom goes 😎.

So let's start with what I had recently posted in one of my WhatsApp groups. You may find the post very informal, without the needed punctuation but otherwise quite comprehensible:

(We grew up hearing that Rusyan sra kafir di o zamung o da Islam dushman (that Russians were hardened  infidels and enemies of Islam)

By the same stretch of definition, Chinese were also sur kafirs (hardened infidels) but they being our friends were not 

Russia has since abandoned communist ideology but China hasn't despite its forays into the world of capitalism 

So as we started growing up, and realized that in order to go up in the world through the competition examinations we were left dependent on reading how the West saw the world 

According to the said teachings everything manufactured in the former Soviet Union was substandard including their commercial airlines 

I was recently reading an article on an American media network and I came to know 

That America had waged its war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in a single Mi.17 Soviet helicopter which probably the Mujahideen had captured and handed over to the US

Mi. 17 alone had the capability of flying over the rough skies of Afghanistan 

And it had the strength of a truck that travels in the rough mountainous terrain

My point is:

Since we literally have had our time, our younger lot should be encouraged to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff and do not let themselves be swayed by the lies with which the western media is rampant)

Nasser Yousaf