Children are becoming central. While the abductions in Punjab continued, with organ harvesters and pornographers among those suspected, the PTI was exercised about the Doraemon cartoon too, with a Punjab MPA demanding its ban.

And Khizr Khan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention about his child, Capt Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq, found himself crossing swords with Republican nominee Donald Trump, who added insult to injury by insulting his wife Ghazala. Khizr Khan didn’t let on about a little secret: most of those going into the Army do so to build a career. It’s a profession. How many of our own men in khaki join in the hope of martyrdom? If we are to believe what we are told, everyone. But actually, there is always the chance of becoming COAS and taking over. Actually, that’s the only way a boy from a middle-class family can ever become head of the Pakistani government.

In India, it’s different. There Narendra Modi became PM even though the son of a tea-stall owner. The BJP has had to turn, it seems, to middle class Indians once the Congress was taken over by the Nehru dynasty. No one has taken over the BJP the way Motilall Nehru took over the Congress and gave it to his son Jawaharlal. But you never know.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh may well be a middle class boy, being the son of farmers, but more importantly, he is from an upper caste, being a Rajput. He sits for Lucknow, A.B. Vajpayee’s old constituency, but showed precious little of the latter’s good manners when he came to Islamabad for the SAARC Home Ministers’ Conference. His Pakistani counterpart is also a Rajput, but in a country where it doesn’t stop him being on the wrong end of odious comparisons with Mr Bean. And though Ch Nisar Ali Khan went to the best schools, he isn’t as educated as Rajnnath, who did his masters in physics. That didn’t stop him introducing vedic mathematics in UP syllabi when he was the Education Minister there. Neither his knowledge of physics nor his representing Lucknow prevented him blaming Pakistan for the current violence in Kashmir, where there were more people killed. But then, maybe he didn’t just learn physics in Gorakhpur, where he studied, but that Muslims are responsible for the riots there, which is the view held by the current MP, a Swami.

However, these days, the BJP seems more bent on dealing with Dalits rather than Muslims, with Dalit objections to being killed having made Shantaben, the woman who replaced Modi as Gujerat Chief Minister, resign. She has been replaced by a Jain, not a Patel, as widely expected. Modi is far from being a Patel, being a Teli, but the upper-caste patidars were up in arms recently, because they felt excluded by lower castes with quotas.

Rajnath Singh doesn’t have to deal with just the Dalits and Muslims, but also with whoever killed 13 people in the explosion in the Guwhati market. The reason one couldn’t just slap the blame on them was because it might have been Bodo separatists. Bodos are separatists who want out of Assam.

However, the reluctance to blame militants shouldn’t have stopped the British authorities blaming them for the knife attacks that led to an American woman being killed in London. After all, the attacker was a Somali, who had possibly been smuggled into the UK by Al—Shabab. Instead, the authorities said he had ‘mental problems’. It’s intriguing how militants now carrying out attacks in the West have mental problems. The new paradigm seems to be of the mad Muslim. Only a mad Muslim would turn to militancy, this implies.

Presumably this paradigm doesn’t apply to Allama Professor Dr Tahirul Qadri, who launched his campaign against the government for justice in the Model Town killings. This coincides with the expected PTI sit-in from Independence Day. It’s not clear where Qadri is on the Doraemon issue. Imran Khan says he’s now too old to watch cartoons. H’mmmm… When my father watched Tom’n’Jerry cartoons alongside his grandson, that was not because he was too old or young, but because the cartoons were good. I’m afraid the Doraemon cartoons are not all that good. Maybe the PTI should work harder on banning something else. Maybe Rajnath Singh?

One person who probably was not concerned was Shamim Ara, who passed away in London recently. She had had a brain haemorrhage a while back, and was by now above all of this, even though she had been an actress of renown, and a director of almost equal ability. She has now passed beyond the concerns of this life, beyond cartoons, even beyond the torrential rains that have killed 10 people in Karachi.

I know the monsoon has yet to strike in Lahore with the sort of flooding that cripples everyday life but it seems that we should be prepared for a monsoon that is both heavy and late. It has already struck in Karachi. And the sort of humidity we are living through surely presages a torrential downpour.