The making of a leader!
The chemistry of ingredients making up a ‘Leader’ differs from cultures to cultures and countries to countries. With us all that it takes in the clay work of putting together a Leader is having an all-purpose beak of a crow, a snake’s forked tongue, wits that of a chicken, callousness that of a wayward drifter along with a dog’s throat that could bark aloud and stubbornness of a mule laden over with ill-justified pride. Above all, the potter who shall have these ingredients to form up a Leader must also have to be blind. Such is the recipe of a Leader in the time and space of our location.
It is the scientific wisdom of poets that they can tell the future while taking nodes from the society’s pulse which they have their fingers posed on. They are no magicians to sketch the future before it is even confronted or before it actually even happens. Ghani Khan, famously known as the Mad Philosopher, in his poem Leader, provides the details of how Leaders are made in our part of the world. It was written decades back but it stood and continues to stand the tests of time even as of this moment.
A crow’s beak is the first of the list of attributes or ingredients he claims to seek out in this Leader pottery work. A crow’s beak is special in the sense that it is an all-purpose beak. It is used for scrapping meat, breaking hard nuts, making holes etc. Through this is implied the quality of maximum absorption and the ability to forsake nothing and no one. The element of cruelty is an allied idea-bit associated with this description.
The Mad Philosopher continues to present the next of the list which is to have a snake’s forked tongue. Snake’s tongue is one complex science in itself. The sensory system of a snake rests on the tongue. While it flicks it, it gets the smell of nearby hunts as well as the predators. While its survival heavily depends on its forked tongue, it is gifted with the art to not make much show of its tongue and while resting back in mouth it does wonders. So this ingredient will enable the Leader to hunt with accurate precision at one hand and at the same time on the other hand not become dinner to some predator himself.
As for wisdom, it is not something to be much worried of. A little bit of brain to be able to sense one’s actions and feel body parts is fairly enough and this amount of brain is actually found in chickens so our Leader has to have brains at par that of a chicken.
Rhetoric are essentially required whether they make sense or otherwise. Long and lengthy periods of rhetoric help engage the people without enabling them to comprehend anything. For this reason the attribute of having a dog’s throat is juxtaposed which keeps on barking without any reason and we do know that barking dogs seldom bite.
The ingredients do not stop here. Our Leader has to have the mulishness of a mule and this stubbornness must also be hued with pride. This means our Leader has to be proud of nothing: but, his stand-alone positioning and opinioned stances. The boss is always right!
The last tincture to add to the colorful clay work of our would-be Leader is to ensure availability of ideological mixes and deviations of purpose. That is to mean our Leader should be ambidextrous to appeal and question the fundamental social issues with solutions that he would never have. This will make him the permanent hope for the people without being ever fulfilled.
Now the potter will make us our new Leader with above ingredients.
But remember: the potter has to be blind too!
Published in The Express Tribune, April 28th, 2022.
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