Pakistan is a second home
Friday , January 06, 2006
Blog this Email Entry
http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/blog_entry.php?id=3368&author_id=107
When I was asked to go to Pak to cover the Indo-Pak tests in 2004, I admit I was a tad apprehensive. Nothing very serious, just the usual pangs of anxiety due to the legendary enmity between the two countries. But the moment I landed in Pak, everything flipped over and I fell completely in love with this land that was once what my ancestors called home. To say that the people of Pakistan are warm, generous and helpful is to state the obvious. Not only me, almost every Indian who arrived for the matches went back to India raving about the hospitality of Pakistani’s who did their best to make it a great experience for everyone.
India won the One-Dayers and the series were very well fought. Since my roots are in Pakistan, I spent a lot of time after the matches soaking in nostalgic moments and even realised, while walking around Lahore that more people in Pak resembled me in looks, speech and behavior than they do in India.
Pakistan is all about nostalgia, I have grown up hearing stories from my parents about Pakistan and India and the years before the Partition. Initially, I had cynically thought the Pakistanis were being nice to us Indians as part of a mammoth diplomatic strategy. But then, I met a poor rickshaw puller who probably earned only Rs 100 a day. When he heard I was from India, he absolutely refused to charge me money. That’s when all my cynical theories went out of the window and till this day that rickshaw-puller remains in my mind’s eye as the paragon of Pakistani hospitality. My next theory now is that Pakistani hospitality has something to do with the water of Punjab, for hospitality seems to lie in their genes.
After reporting at all the Tests, I took off to do a bit of sightseeing in Multan, Peshawar and Lahore. Being an avid lover of Sufi music, Pakistan was like a homecoming for me. I stocked up on my collection of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Abida Parveen and visited the shrines of Baba Bulle Shah and Baba Farid.
The icing on the cake was India beating Pak on their own home turf. It remains the happiest moment for me in my last 5 years as a sports correspondent. The image of Ganguly holding the winners trophy, standing with his boys, his eyes raised up to the sky is a picture I will remember for always. I was lucky to be the only TV journo allowed to interview Ganguly that day. When I asked him what he thought were the strides taken in cricket that day, he replied with a glint of achievement in his eyes: “We can all say that we have taken our team forward.”
I also cannot forget the shy Indian coach John Wright, who refused to appear in Team photos whenever India won because he believed every victory belonged solely to the team. That day Sehwag forced him to come and stand in the picture frame and as the photographer clicked away, I saw tears in the shy New Zealanders eyes.
So, the impact of Indo-Pak cricket isn’t just felt across the subcontinent but reached through to one heart in faraway New Zealand as well.
This time round I’m really looking forward to visiting Pak again- to meet some friends, eat some great food in Gawal Mandi in Lahore and revisit my roots and of course, report as well. And for the pleasure of being in Pakistan again, I won’t even mind the odd calls from Rajdeep Sardesai (CNN-IBN) who will be scrutinising my reportage.