minutes of fame` is a well known expression that connotes a brief period of fame, or fame that is highly fleeting. The phrase is often attributed to the American visual artist Andy Warhol. In 1968, Warhol `predicted` that tools to become famous (albeit for a brief period of time) will become available to every person.

Indeed, today, anyone can gain short bursts of fame by using digital tools and social media platforms. But such folk often fall back into oblivion. The irony is, if gaining fame has become easier, sustaining it has become harder. Fame can be addictive even that of the 15-minute variety. People want to elongate it. They become desperate enough to even cross certain ethical boundaries to remain in the picture.

And when they can`t, they plunge into depression. Some ultimately accept their fate, but some try to rekindle moments of `fame` by triggering sympathy for themselves through self-pitying/ teary-eyed videos and posts. They may also start talking about their deteriorating mental health, or apologise for their `unethical` behaviour. This may lead to another round of `fame`, but one that doesn`t have much staying power as well.

The desire to cling to one`s 15 minutes of fame can be a rather awkward manifestation of pathos. It is present in politics as well. In May 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic had started to peak, a report by Renobased journalist William Puchert pleaded that the state government of Nevada start taking more serious steps against protesters who were regularly gathering to oppose the mandatory wearing of masks and the closure of shops.Puchert wrote, `It`s time for their 15 minutes of fame to be over.` According to Puchert, the protesters were not only becoming willing conduits of the highly contagious Covid-19 virus, but that they were holding protests because they had started to enjoy the coverage they were getting in the media.

Puchert was sure the moment the media stopped giving them coverage the protesters were likely to disperse. Yet, it was also possible that decreasing media coverage could have made the protesters adopt even more desperate tactics to cling on to their `fame.

Take the recent example of protests in Sindh against the federal government`s decision to irrigate a corporate farming project in the arid Cholistan region in Punjab through canals cut from parts of the River Indus that runs across Sindh. The Sindh government is headed by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).Parties that oppose the PPP-led government began to hold protests against the project.

Pressured by Sindhi nationalist groups, the Islamist Jamiat Ulemai-Islam (JUI-F), the conservative Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), and the populist Pakistan Tehreeki-Insaf (PTI), the PPP-led provincial government, too, began holding rallies against the project. It then accelerated the process of making the federal government put the project on the backburner.

The PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto argued that, at a time when India was threatening all-out war and the cancellation of a vital water treaty with Pakistan, the situation required that the canal project be postponed. The federal government agreed. Yet, even though the size of the protests shrank, they began to get more aggressive.

I believe this was/is a case of (political) 15 minutes of fame.

Consider this: figuratively speaking,since 2008, Sindhi nationalists, PTI, JUlF and GDA combined have never received as many votes in an election in Sindh as the number of hours of media coverage that they have recently received. Especially to the Sindhi nationalists, it doesn`t really matter anymore if the project has finally been halted. Leaders who often lose by tens of thousands of votes to PPP candidates in Sindh suddenly began to see their photos, flags and words in all kinds of media.

But after the project was postponed, their 15 minutes of fame began winding down. As I am writing this (on Monday, April 28), some attempts were being made by Sindhi nationalists to force the Sindh government`s hand. With the media now more focused on the rising tensions between Pakistan and India, violence at an anti-canal protest alone can keep the Sindhi nationalists in the picture. They want to cling to the `fame` that they enjoyed and nowthink they might be losing it. They are.

Clingers in this regard start to intently focus on one specific area of concern, while overlooking other important concerns. When the recent Pakistan-India tensions began to peak, the anti-canal protests or, for that matter, a strike call by the Jamaati-Islami to protest against Israeli brutalities in Gaza, started to seem out of place.

So, can one assume that those who try to cling to their 15 minutes of fame may end up divorcing themselves from reality that exists outside their own immediate interests? In December 2014, when the Nawaz Sharif government and the military establishment decided to launch a large-scale military operation against Islamist militants, PTl chief Imran Khan was holding a sit-in in Islamabad against the Nawaz regime. When asked to end the sit-in by the government and sign a multiparty agreement on the military operation, Khan refused. The then military chief Gen Raheel Sharif had to arm-twist Khan into calling off the sit-in.

As Khan was moving out of the sit-in area, his car was swarmed by groups of men and women who were pleading him not to go. One of them was a good friend`s maternal aunt. My friend told me she was there at the sit-in from day one and one could often see her on TV as well. She became a celebrity of sorts in her circle of friends and relatives.

But now there she was, weeping and urging Khan not to end the sit-in.

It didn`t matter to her that just a few days before, militants had slaughtered over 140 students and teachers at a school in Peshawar. Instead, to retain that `buzz` and attention that she had received during the heyday of the sitin, she willingly cut herself off from a less glorious reality.

Unfortunately, she then slipped into depression. My friend never mentioned her again. He still doesn`t.