Rape …

This morning we had a piece by Saba Imtiaz in The Express Tribune and we are told that Laalchand has been arrested. The public anger is, however, directed at Sharmila Farooqui: She named the victim, discussed things about her, talked of her being at a party and coming late, almost offering "the girl is responsible" by calling her 'rude' and other names. This was an amazingly stupid and disgusting method of harassing the girl and making it all the more difficult for women to report such incidences.

The media followed the crime and reported in it with the same amazement and amusement that they use for such cases, implying things and saying everything other than "the girl was guilty".

Away from all of this, I went to see a 'comedy' show at T2F. The artist was Ayesha Rokadia. Well, she was the artist but was to have friends joining her. The fact that everything starts on time at T2F (and she was told this) ... made no difference as she appeared ("because of traffic") around 25 minutes late. Actually 55 minutes, if we were to take the fact that she said she'd be there at 6.30 when I last saw her.

She's a regular writer for comedy shows in the USA — but as a comedian she was not great at all. Of course that happens at times to the best of comedians, so one can forgive it. The problem was that she decided to open the show with a 'rape joke' (and said, after the show, that she had many more jokes on rape that she would do 'the next time'). Why? Why would a girl want to do a 'rape joke'? Everyone who had any sense of humour and intelligence was upset.

After a whole day of talking about the Clifton rape — and screaming their heads off at the Media and Sharmila — Tweeples wrote about the show in disgust.

Ayesha's friends were Sami Shah, Ishma Alvi, Haroon Saad, and OBA. It could have gotten much worse without them. Fortunately the friends did bring some humour into the show. Specially Sami Shah and OBA. But Ishma and Haroon, good in telling their stories, stayed slightly away from getting a good punchline.

Jeezus! Just as I was about to end this I saw another item.

Oh, well …