Well, Fateh Ali Khan has passed on. After his brother Amanat Ali died in 1974, he was the head of the Patiala gharana, though by that time he had given up singing. However, it was his nephews, Shafqat and the late Asad Amanat, who took the gharana in a direction which he had resisted, that of pop.

India also suffered a loss, that of Om Puri, a ‘versatile actor’ (which actually means ‘not a hero’). He was 66, and it was no wonder Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif expressed his condolences. Not only was Puri someone who worked for Indo-Pak peace, but he was actually younger than Mian Nawaz. Mian Nawaz not only has nobody to talk with in India about peace, now that the Modi government seems bent on making warlike noises, but he must realise that it’s a bad sign when people younger than you die. When nobody says how young was the dead man who passed away, that’s a really bad sign. Imran Khan has got some explaining to do, because how can he attract the youth vote when people roughly his age are keeling over. Imran is 63, which puts him in the same decade as the late Om Puri. All those supporting him should know that he could pass away at any moment.

Well, he hasn’t passed away yet. Instead, he went off to Lodhran, where four children had been killed in a rickshaw-train collision, as a train passed through a level crossing which the rickshaw tried to get over first. I haven’t been near Lodhran, but I can imagine the rickshaw driver who thought he could cross over. If he hadn’t been run over, he would have come to Lahore, and been tempted to take on trains at level crossings here.

Imran demanded the resignation of the Railways Minister, Kh Saad Rafique. Well, he isn’t resigning. Nor is his brother Salman, who is the Punjab Minister for Specialized Healthcare and Medical Education. Even though Zohra Bibi, from Kasur, died on the floor of the Jinnah Hospital, where she had been put after coming in for treatment of a cardiac problem. Though Salman didn’t resign, the hospital’s medical superintendent was suspended. True, neither the suspension nor the resignation would have brought Zohra Bibi back, so perhaps one would be as good as the other.

While Zohra Bibi could not be brought back, Tayyiba could not be. Tayyiba, the young girl from a Jaranwala village, was a maid at the house of an additional sessions judge in Islamabad, where the judge’s wife tortured her. I know sometimes the servants won’t listen, but I cannot think of any circumstances which would justify holding a hand on a heated tawa. Except perhaps mental disturbance of some kind.

Anyhow, that shows the sort of home environment in which our judges operate. And the military is now no longer in the business of trying militants, now that the law giving military courts jurisdiction has expired. Actually, none of these sad events has yet been ascribed to the militants, even though they, or at least their sympathisers, paralysed Lahore on Salman Taseer’s death anniversary. They managed to stop the candlelight vigil that sympathisers had been holding, but in the process they managed to ensure that everyone in Lahore who had his life disrupted, in short everyone, had commemorated the death anniversary.

Now I wonder why the traffic mess was not blamed on the militants. They have not just been busted in Lahore, but also in Turkey. Indeed, they seem to be turning up the heat there, what with New Year’s Eve in an Istanbul nightclub being marked by an Islamic State gunman who killed 39 people when he sprayed the crowd with bullets. This was followed by the gunman in Izmir, who killed two, and whom the local authorities tried to pass off as a Kurdish militant. It’s lucky neither attack has been presented as a Gulenist conspiracy, as the assassination of the Russian ambassador was. According to President Erdogan, it seems, the enemies are the Gulenists, the Kurds and then the militants.

Gulen is in exile in the USA, there are Kurdish groups working alongside the USA in Syria, so where does that leave the militants? As enemies of Donald Trump. However, he seemed more exercised about Arnold Schwarznegger having taken over from him in his reality show. Schwarznegger seems on Trump’s track. He’s also a Republican, having once been Governor of California, elected in a special recall election held midterm. He also has a messed-up family life, having gone through a divorce from his wife because of an adulterous affair. He’s also an outsider, actually being unable to run because he’s not US-born. He’s not just the real deal, while Trump is just of German descent, he’s also got more muscles. And while had to find a Cabinet member with a cool nickname, Defense Secretary ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Arnie has a cool nickname of his own: the Terminator.

Trump’s fascination with showbiz even in the run-up to being inaugurated President reminds me of the Emperor Nero. He wasn’t satisfied with becoming Emperor at such a young age, but also wanted to be known as a great musician, a great actor and a great sportsman. He ended up fiddling while Rome burnt. Wonder what Trump will be famous for.