They say culture is what your butcher would have if he was a surgeon, and a tailor would have if he was a fashion designer. It is also what Lahore would have, if it witnessed a bona fide Italian opera or so, the Honorary Consul of Italy in Lahore seems to think. Last week he actually arranged just such an event that was meant to be the mother of all events. An opera singer was flown in from Italy. The catering contract was given to a restaurant known for its Italian cuisine. However he did miss out on the most important detail. An opera hall with the right acoustics. Instead, the opera singer was expected to perform in a canopy erected in the Consul's own back lawn. The singer did arrive in Lahore and check into a five-star hotel, but she never did turn up at the event. The guests waited ate the fingerlickin' food and waited. They say the opera singer caught a stomach bug and was incapacitated. However, others claim she had pre-stage fright at the thought of singing under a canopy leaking sound in all directions. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Word has it that the Farah Dogar case has taken a new turn. Black coat Iftikhar Hussein Rajput has now approached the Supreme Judicial Council. Apparently thanks to a constitutional amendment an ordinary citizen can now move for accountability from this august body. The other black coat involved, Syed Javaid Iqbal Jafree, has quite a reputation as the man who drafted the Ombudsman law and presented it to the late General Ziaul Haq. He is also a groundbreaking artist whose work is part of the Tate Gallery's permanent collection. With such obsessive black coats at work, someone may be in real trouble. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Rumor has it that the swoop on Khanani and Kalia's money-changing operation was not a knee jerk reaction to the capital flight out of Pakistan. We hear that some banks had been complaining about the foreign money coming in through the K and K channel, money they would have liked flowing through their own veins instead. So in a true Hollywood "Mission Impossible" fashion, the PM's Adviser on Interior carried out a sting operation on the moneychangers. K and K's fate was thus sealed.