WERE I A GENIE
B.A.D. Magazine takes pleasure in introducing for the first time select chapters from Raja Changez Sultan’s latest book A NOBLE PRIZE AND A THOUSAND WIVES. Each chapter is written in the form of a letter to his daughter in which he delves on the good, the bad and the ugly from dinosaur days to the present – and indeed into the future. In each episode his contributions result in his winning the Noble Prize and a thousand wives and thereafter he ends up playing tennis on the Islamabad Tennis courts with his mentor, Razzaki. enjoy the read ……………
Dearest Muki,
Were I a genie just out of the lamp and you had three wishes, I’d tell you which ones to make!
For one, you should ask me to destroy all the weapons in the world. Naturally I would begin by knocking out all nukes everywhere and – short of a hand held catapult – I would collect every other piece of hardware from every nook and corner of the globe, stuff them in a container, take it to outer space and fill the vacuum of a black hole with it! That should leave the world a slightly happier place!
For another, you should ask me to find a way of balancing the world population in such a manner that every man, woman and child has enough to eat! Only that number of births per family will be permitted which will balance off the dying population and sustain the ecology in a most admirable manner!
The third wish you should make is to get an endless number of wishes! This way, between you and me we could cure all the world’s ills and have everybody living in a utopia of our making!
Obviously by the time we are through the Ozone layer would be restored, all mountain ranges will balance off their annual glacial melt with the amount of rain received and there will be no room for global warming, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and all other natural disasters and no one alive, including trees will ever again be struck down by lightning!
Next you should ask me to release all prisoners locked up in jails after extracting all evil from their hearts and erasing past memory of what they might have done to end up in jail! Though I may not be able to knock the devil out of this world but I would try locking him up in his beloved Hell so he does not get after the souls that currently reside in the living at least!
While we are at it, why don’t we erase all geographical boundaries as well so there are no distinct countries! This way, no one would require passports or visas and police registrations and a whole lot of paper work that keeps our immigration departments busy. Without Countries around, naturally the United Nations and its many such-like arms would also become redundant; as would the World Bank, The IMF and all international banking!
Now, were I able to do all that – and whatever else you ask – I would be one hell of a genie wouldn’t I?
Well I have news for you! A genie like this one is the sum total of all goodness that, in tiny parts, resides in each one of us – young and old; white, brown, black or yellow! Because we do not allow it to come out often enough and do its bit, the world has become a sorrier place!
Now for this absolutely brilliant deduction, I am sure to get my Nobel Prize, a royal residency close enough to Paradise and 1000 wives who are always up for discovering the genie that resides in them!
Am off now to meet up with Razzaki on the tennis courts! I hope he has not as yet discovered what his genie can do for his cross-court forehand! The day he finds out, Rafa would be in deep trouble!
Dadski – from inside the Lamp.
Raja Changez Sultan is an internationally recognized poet painter and his work can be seen on facebook.
