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After losing its eastern wing in 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto replaced General Yeah Yeah Khan as the country’s new premier. Bhutto’s socialist Bakistan Beoples Barty (BBB) had won the 1970 elections in West Bakistan before East Bakistan separated due to a civil war and became the independent republic of Pangladesh.

The hefty General Yeah Yeah blamed the defeat of the Bakistani army to nationalist Pengali forces backed by flying Hindu yogis on his new dietitian who had advised him to stop eating meat and stick to vegetables if he wanted to attract the attention of Elizabeth Taylor.

Bakistani historians now believe that Yeah Yeah’s doctor was actually a Hindu agent masquerading as a dietitian and part-time Pengali cook.

Nevertheless, Bhutto set about reconstructing the country and the first thing he did was to start nationalising a number of private companies and schools by asking their owners to start painting little Bakistani flags on their cheeks and singing rowdy national songs about sweaty muscular men lifting weights.

He then gave Bakistan its first real constitution in 1973.  In 1974, on the bharpoor and popular demand of the religious parties (especially the Jamaat-e-Jaami), Bhutto used the same constitution to label the Bambies as a heretical non-Muslim sect of blood-sucking leeches.

The outlawing of the Bambies as a sect made the religious parties very happy and they celebrated the event by distributing sweetmeat on the streets of Lahore and setting fire to shops and stuff owned by the Bambies. Boy, it was fun.

As Bhutto was massaging the religious parties’ egos thinking they will let him be after banning the Bambies, a civil war broke out in the province of Palochistan where people finally got sick of living on a regular diet of desert cactus and … desert cactus. What’s more, even their clothes were made of desert cactus!

Accusing the Paloch people of insulting Palochistan’s national plant (the desert cactus), Bhutto sent in the army, armed with big guns, missiles, fighter jets and tanks. They were up against a rag-tag group of Paloch insurgents armed with bow and arrows, sling-shots, boxing gloves and hockey sticks – all made from desert cactus.

The Paloch were routed, and that made Bhutto very happy. However, in the process he completely forgot about his Islamist opponents whom he thought were still busy celebrating the banning of Bambies. The religious parties began accusing Bhutto of being an alcoholic, a womaniser and for being partially bald. This angered and perturbed Bhutto who responded by outlawing the Bambies again.

Religious party leaders who – although had been calling one another infidels – could not resist getting together for a mass-scale movement against Bhutto, demanding the imposition of the Nizam-i-Mullah.

It is said that the  Nizam-i-Mullah movement was being funded by fat shopkeepers, fatter businessmen and certain dietitians who were now working for the American CIA.

In the commotion, the army led by John Wayne (masquerading as a pious Bakistani general by the name of Ziaul Duck), stepped in and overthrew Bhutto, later sending him to the gallows for being anti-Islam, anti-Bakistan and partially bald.

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Zia decided that he was more pious than the religious parties and was the right man to impose the Nizam-i-Mullah. The fat shopkeepers, fatter businessmen and Jamat-i-Jaami agreed.

Zia banned the BBB, closed down nightclubs, outlawed alcohol, asked women to stop wearing make-up on TV , asked them to start sounding like men on the radio, let their husbands beat them up and also allowed their mothers-in-law to kill them in ‘accidental’ cooking stove explosions.  Oh, and he also banned the Bambies all over again.

Then in 1980, General Duck began introducing harsh punishments. Some of these punishments included public floggings (popcorn was on the house), putting rape victims (instead of the rapists) in jail, and putting a man called Azhar Lodhi on PTV to read the 9 o’clock news!

Duck’s luck got a boost when the Mongolian forces occupied a worthless piece of rock called Afghanistan. The Americans hated the Mongolians, so they took Zia’s advice to finance a jihad against the Mongolians through Bakistan.

Millions of dollars and tons weapons started to come Zia’s way from the Americans and khajoor-rich Arab kingdoms. Overnight various jihadi outfits sprang up, comprising of men whom until recently, most Bakistanis thought were mad or were seen as inconsequential extras in bad Lollywood films.

But Zia’s policies made sure that being mad now meant being pious. To rejoice this he outlawed the Bambies again and reintroduced desert cactus as Palochistan’s national plant – and dish.

So for almost a decade, Bakistan fought a glorious jihad against Mongolians and celebrated the imposition of the Nizam-i-Mullah by looking the other way whenever atrocities were committed in the name of honour, faith, jihad and the latest pirated Bollywood film.

Ziaul Duck, jihadis and Amitabh Bachchan became heroes, emulated by millions of young Bakistanis who suddenly rediscovered their faith by learning how to make bombs, attack fahash women, call everybody else ‘kafir,’ heretic or Bambi, all the while perfecting their latest Jitendra and Mithun dance moves. It was glorious.

But, alas, there were always those who were jealous of all the prosperity and happiness that Bakistan was enjoying under the Ziaul Duck dictatorship. Bitten by the wonderful ways of the Nizam-i-Mullah, a man called M. Hanif put a crate of mangoes rigged with explosives on Zia’s camel. Though the mangoes failed to explode, Zia did, and as a result his camel crashed, killing him instantly.

In his book, ‘A Case of Exploding Dentures,’ M. Hanif claims that someone (most probably a Mongolian agent), had placed a tiny bomb in the denture that Zia used, which exploded before his mangoes could.

Whatever the case, Zia exploded and this ended one of finest and most pious and victorious and glorious and magnificent and brilliant and Rambo-esque and ‘everybody-wants-kung-fu-fighting,’ ‘stayin’-alive, stayin’-alive-ah-ah-ah-ah-stayin’-alive-stayin’-alive,’ and head-banging, and kick-a** period in the history of Pakistan.

Oh, and did I mention, the Bambies were outlawed?

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.