CITY NOTES I suppose all of you out there are due, rather overdue, for congratulations, because you have lived to see the day when Khalid Maqbool is no longer Governor of the Punjab. The chap who came over from NAB, just before the 2002 elections, stayed throughout the Ch Parvez Elahi years, and that meant tolerating Ch Shujjat, black glasses and all. The irony is that the PPP decided to replace him with Salman Taseer, as much a fan of black glasses as Ch Shujjat. But why blame Ch Shujjat for the black-glasses trend? The man who really got it started was the late Jam Sadiq Ali, who as Sindh Chief Minister made it all right to actually dine in dark glasses. This was followed by his son Jam Mashooq Ali, who was a state minister in the Nawaz cabinet, and who not only favoured dark glasses after dinner, but also tried (unsuccessfully, one hopes) to make jeans with a t-shirt more fashionable in the National Assembly than the fatui-shalwar-qameez. So Salman Taseer has got good authority for wearing black glasses, and for some reason he wore a sherwani but no dark glasses for his oath-taking. The PML-N claims it was not consulted. Well, what if it had been? It would merely have added the Jinnah cap in which Shehbaz plans to take oath as Chief Minister, which Nawaz used for three oaths as Punjab CM and two as PM. In fact, the big story of all the oaths so far is the absence of the Jinnah cap. It used to be so fashionable once upon a time, it was quite foppish, and until the early 1980s, was de rigueur for bridegrooms, but not their fathers. One of the great absentees from the Taseer oath was Yusuf Salli, the Sufi Saint of Lahore. It is with the Sufi Saint that the new Governor first won fame, despite his numerous accounting exploits by then. Of the Governors that the PPP have selected for Lahore, Salman is the very first Lahori. It has been whispered that he cleared the interview with the President. Well, why shouldn't he? Once the President, whose personal representative he is supposed to be, has overcome his distaste at his being a civilian, why not make him his man in Lahore? Military men have overcome their distaste for civilians enough to let Sain Yousuf Reza Gilani to visit ISI HQ in total disregard of the flooring, on which he is said to have expectorated freely. The DG ISI should not be left in the Army after that, especially since he was accompanied by Asif Zardari, whose nearest approach to a uniform was the Cadet College Petaro, run by the Navy. Anyhow, between the new Governor and the Sufi Saint of Lahore, Lahore should be pleasant enough for The Civilian Petarian and for the man the Governor will be representing. After all, the Governor is really the good part of fighting the War on Terror. He is also one of the leading theoreticians of Enlightened Moderation, which the outgoing man is not, and thus useless for the job. If you want really to know about Taliban beliefs, then ask our Ambassador to Kabul, who has only now been released after months in Taliban captivity. But if you want to know about Taliban, or rather Al-Qaeda, beliefs, you have a problem that can only be cured either by the Sufi Saint of Lahore, or by Him Who Has Been On The Roof Of The Kaaba, and is a Syed to boot. These are genuine people, who can tell you that all is Vanity, and that the Lawyers' Long March is going to be a failure, because such people deserve to fail. After all, the PPP is determined enough to prevent any embarrassment from reaching the President to take the PML-N resignations in stride, and will make sure that no Long March has any effect on Sain Yousaf Reza Gilani, who has gone to Washington to make a mess of the White House's floors. Take it from me, the Oval Office will never be the same again. Bush won't know what hit him--- or rather his floors. And he will be suddenly afraid of turning down any request that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi might make when he is told that Shah Mehmood Sain comes from the same district as Yousaf Sain. But what does any of this matter compared to the ambulances that Ch Pervez Elahi gave to Lahore, and which the drivers have rendered valueless by driving with the siren on, not for a critical patient, but themselves. Somehow, one does not want to blame them, because it seems there is no other way of getting through Lahore's traffic.