Pictures of Pakistan
Karan Thapar
A visit to Pakistan is a revealing experience. It’s different to what you imagine. Most Indians arrive with a certain trepidation. Many of us are uncertain of how we will be received, suspicious of the country, or simply prejudiced. So the first surprise is the welcome.
Because we look like them they don’t know you are Indian until you reveal your identity. When you do they respond with a mixture of curiosity, attentiveness and affection. They go out of their way to be nice. The impact is both immediate and overwhelming.
It’s amusing to witness. Last week I saw how the response of my colleague Ashok Upadhyay changed in the course of a single day. He arrived early in the morning, unsure of what awaited him. For the first few hours he was tentative, even tense. Being Bihari, he doesn’t share my Punjabi propensity to warm to things Pakistani. If anything, he’s suspicious of it. So the more I seemed to relax, the more reserved he became.
By lunch, however, Ashok’s manner had begun to change. He was chatting to waiters and taxi drivers with easy familiarity. In the afternoon he started to notice striking similarities between both countries: yellow and black taxis, trees half-painted white and people lounging in parks under shady trees. By the evening he was praising Pakistanis for wearing shalwar-kameez. In this sartorial uniformity he seemed to see equality and unity.
I noticed the change but did not realise how profoundly it had altered Ashok’s attitude. At dinner I discovered the depth of the transformation.
“You know,” he said, in the same chatty voice he uses in Delhi when he is visibly relaxed and carefree. “Pakistan is just like India. I feel completely at home.”
I smiled. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“The only difference,” he continued, “are the road signs in Urdu.”
“Oh there’s one more” I added. “There are no cows wandering around the city.”
“Ummm,” Ashok muttered, his expression metamorphosing into a rare look of mischief. “Not of the bovine variety but what about the human ones?”
The other surprise is how critical Pakistanis are of their country and their politicians. Most of us in India would not have thought so. We tend to see them through the prism of their military dictatorship. It can be terribly misleading.
The Pakistani papers are at least as critical of their government as ours are of Mr Vajpayee’s. Their news channels question, probe, embarrass, expose as effectively and as regularly as do NDTV, Star or Aaj Tak. And the ordinary man in Islamabad is as contemptuous of his netas as we, in Delhi, are of ours. General Musharraf is not excluded. No doubt his charm and financial probity are admired but the political mess he finds himself in as he struggles to retain his army uniform alongside his civilian presidency is the subject of ceaseless comment. Much of it is ridicule.
“I had no idea that freedom of speech was so passionately upheld in your country,” Ashok commented to a retired Pakistani ambassador at a dinner in Islamabad.
The man roared with delight. He had noticed the tone of amazement in Ashok’s voice and it amused him. He gulped generously from the large whisky in his right hand as he avuncularly slapped Ashok across the shoulders with the other.
“Arre yaar,” he laughed. “In Pakistan the issue is not freedom of speech. Here the big question is freedom after speech!”
If, like me, you believe it’s the little things that count, then Pakistanis have a penchant for paying attention to the smallest courtesies. Tea, sandwiches and biscuits are offered at every meeting. Each time you say ‘thank you’ you’re bound to receive a ‘welcome sir’ in quick response. And whenever Pakistanis agree to do something they unfailingly add ‘Inshallah’.
Yet the touch that quite literally took my breath away was after our interview with Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri. I haven’t experienced anything like this before.
I arranged the interview a month earlier. At the time Mr Kasuri insisted we lunch with him before departing.
“Tell me,” he asked “do you have any dietary restrictions?”
I said I would cheerfully eat a horse but added that Ashok was a strict vegetarian.
“Glad you told me,” he said. I didn’t think he would remember and I certainly didn’t imagine how meticulously he would handle the arrangements.
Now Pakistanis love their meat. Their dal is mixed with mutton whilst their subzees are usually stuffed with keema. In fact, they abhor plain vegetables. Yet at lunch the menu was entirely vegetarian. From soup to savoury – and we went through four courses – it was carefully planned to avoid anything that might bhrasht Ashok’s dharma. Even the minister turned herbivorous!
Pictures of Pakistan
