Duel of The Century: Tale Of Two Duelling Mighty Intellectuals

Cartoonish depiction of a true tale of two mighty Mughals — they rarely settle for a weaker descriptor, so let’s persist with mighty here — from the esteemed village of Mulhal Mughlan, namely Zia Mehmood Mirza, whom we will call the “Lutt Tuta Langoor”, and his not-so-beloved daughter, Farah Zia, whom he declined to offer any Pepsi or Coke. Mr. Zia Mehmood has always been more of a man’s man and never really considered females worthy of carbonated soft drinks.

It is to mighty Mr. Zia Mehmood Mirza’s credit that first he only managed to qualify for a spot in MA english, owing entirely to the prodigious learning abilities he always possessed, and then failed to get his MA in “spectacularly” challenging English in the first attempt. His even more sensational daughter Farah Zia first badly failed to excel in acdemics and even in her MA in journalism or political science, and then failed to pass the CSS exam despite having grown up in an opulent, upper-middle-class family where her father wanted her to perform well. Hence, this cartoon depicts their imaginery last duel precisely at a point when mighty Mr. Zia Mehmood had reached the grand old age of 60 and Farah Zia was in probably mid-to-late 20s. The two mighty Mughlas, the father-daughter duo, decided to engage in a duel involving writing a challenging essay, and this is the depiction of the sensational pace at which that spectacularly intense war of words was fought, the two true giants of the intellectual world in Pakistan: Zia Mehmood and Farah Zia.

The turtle here represents the true genius of the intellectual and literary world, Mr. Zia Mehmood, and his walker indicates the ginormous problems that he used to have with balancing himself while undertaking any intellectual journey of any “significance”. The genie monitoring the progress is the younger me who was getting news of their progress in the intellectual world all thanks to Zia Mehmood’s phenomenally dear nephew, my father.

I have over the years heard that they have somehow managed to amass a large fan following. The true reasons behind the worshipers and fans’ love and praise still remain a real mystery, an unfathomable riddle that has left mathematically and scientifically oriented folks utterly confounded. Nevertheless, they certainly have their admirers.