Monday 26 October 2009

Of Bloody Emails And Letters

Read other ARTICLES by the author to find out why he is banned on Chowq's front page
But since CHOWK is gone forever, you may click on THIS link instead.

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A private TV channel recently reported that the Sindh government has suspended a Horticulture Department official for harassing a female provincial culture and tourism minister by writing her love letters. According to the channel, Iliyas Hulio, a superintendent in the Horticulture Department in Karachi, wrote a love letter in his blood and sent around one hundred emails to the minister. After receiving a complaint from Palijo, the Horticulture Department conducted an inquiry into the matter, during which Hulio confessed writing the letter and emails to the minister.

A quick search on the web revealed things about the esteemed minister

Interestingly, she has quoted the Jewish Talmud underneath her picture on Facebook:

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."

And here is a video of her walking and talking:

Writing love letters is not such a bad thing—believe me, I did my share when I was younger—but emailing a minister not asking her for a promotion but a love potion is totally against all norms of democracy and decency. Democracy needs to flourish; love must perish. Since men often do not bother finding out if the woman in question is bitten by the same bug, the kind of one-way ticket that Hulio (Iglesias?) purchased was bound to take him directly not to Loveland but to the central jail.

Sending unsolicited mail—known as ‘spamming’—is an activity that millions of people indulge in every day without realizing that had they been using postage stamps, the cost of sending one hundred letters would indeed be prohibitive. Despatching one hundred love-letters via postal service can almost bring to the brink of financial ruin a government officer whose salary is insufficient for paying something as essential as the utility bills. The government will never be able to tell us what Hulio wrote in those emails, whether he used spelling and grammar checking software to process loving words, or if he lovingly signed his name as Huli.

I feel Hulio should have waited, but no, he rushed in where government officers fear to tread. Not content with electronic expression of love, he proceeded to extract blood from his veins and filled a fountain pen with the overflowing fountain of love. I have no doubt he sat in his office while the official clock ticked away, pretended to be busy in a meeting as people waited outside to see him, and instead focussed on a bloody activity that he hoped would lead to a secretive mating somewhere into the far reaches of Sindh.

I do not know anybody who has either written or received a love letter written in human blood; that is all Hollywood nonsense and Hulio is a certified copycat lover. Why must one use blood when ballpoint pens are cheap, when words are cheaper, and internet rates are the cheapest in the region? Why was Hulio foolish enough to think that neither his electronic messages could be traced nor produced as evidence? But these are matters that concern a female minister and we will never learn the details of the case.

The system has come down like a hammer on the unintelligent lover-cum-spammer by ensuring that he cools down by losing his job as a superintendant. One might say it is appropriate punishment for a man who, while working for the Horticulture Department, believed it had something to do with hot culture.

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