Views of an Indian in Pakistan

I am an Indian. I have visited Pakistan many times : Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad/Pindi, Multan, Faisalabad, even Azad Kashmir (clandestinely).

Here are some snapshots of what I saw.

The first time I went to Pakistan, I was carrying 27 liters of alcohol. That’s right – twenty seven liters. I had five boxes of wine, four liters each, and seven assorted bottles of gin, vodka etc. This was for my colleague, a hard-drinking Irishman who didn’t want any Scotch. “Everyone in Pakistan drink only Scotch”, he said. “There is more Scotch drunk in Pakistan than is brewed in Scotland”, he said, “what I need is some decent wine. There’s none to be had in Pakistan”.

Needless to say, I was nervous. Here I was, an Indian, going to Pakistan with a huge suitcase full of booze. “Don’t worry”, my colleague said, “we have big time wasta. Everything will be taken care of.”

He kept his word. I was met at the door of the aircraft by a PRO (whom everyone at the Airport seemed to know), whisked me through Immigration, and then on to Customs. The only problem I faced was that the Customs guy refused to believe that the boxes contained wine. Everyone knew wine came in bottles, not boxes ! I tried to explain that these boxes contained plastic bags inside which there was wine. He kept insisting it must be photocopier toner. Booze was no problem, but toner had 200% duty. Finally, his boss was summoned and I was through in a minute.

To continue on the topic of booze, my colleagues and I had dinner with a client at a private room in a swank restaurant, where Scotch was served from a teapot. We drank it from tea-cups, pretending we were having Chinese tea, even though the soda made the drink fuzz a bit !

At Faisalabad I checked into the hotel and asked for a drink. There was stunned silence. Then the Manager arrived with a great big form, checked my religion (Hindu) in my passport, and then made me fill out the form which ended in a declaration that the alcohol was needed by me for medicinal purposes. Shortly thereafter a full bottle of rot-gut whiskey arrived – quite a generous dollop of medicine ! I couldn’t manage more than one peg of that stuff. So I offered the nearly full bottle to the concierge the next morning – he accepted with a huge grin and voluble thanks.

I was invited to dinner at a Pakistani colleague’s home in Karachi. After the third peg of Scotch (inevitably) one of the guests opened up.

“You Indians”, he said, “want to swallow up all your neighbours”. Seeing that I was non-plussed, he proceeded to explain.

“Right in the beginning you swindled us out of half of Kashmir. Then you captured Hyderabad and threw the Nizam out. Next you captured Goa. Then came Sikkim. Nepal is in your pocket. Bhutan is yours. You took East Pakistan away from us by force. You sent troops into Sri Lanka. We are the only people who can fight you, and fight we will.” I realized how India’s foreign policy looked when seen by Pakistani eyes.

At another party a guest asked me where I came from. I said that I was a Bengali. He launched into a long speech on the theme : “Bangladesh and Pakistan are the only nations which can stop the hegemony of India etc etc”. I nodded my head and moved away politely, not caring to explain that I am an Indian born in Calcutta. Has this guy never heard of 1971, I wondered.

While in Faisalabad, a client invited us to his farmhouse for brunch. He came to pick us from our hotel driving a 4X4 Diesel Land Cruiser, a special model which was somewhat like a double-cab pick-up, with an open section at the back. Two huge Pathans, carrying AK 47s, sat in this section – protection !

Our host drove us to his farmhouse, apologizing for its tiny size, a mere 375 acres. As soon as we reached, some 30 odd men rushed to the car and vied with one another to get the chance to lie flat on the ground, I mean full length on the ground, to put their foreheads on his shoes. Some even lifted his foot and placed it on their heads. Our host bent down to pick each them up and pat them on their heads. Later he explained that these were the workers in his farm.

Like a true host, he set about organizing brunch. This is how it went :
- He selected two geese and several chickens from the flocks that ran around in the courtyard
- He sent three guys into the pond to catch fish. They jumped in (fortunately, the pond was only shoulder-deep) and snared several fish until the host was content with the one they caught.
- He sent an elderly watchman to get “titar”. The old man took out an ancient 12 bore shotgun and proceeded towards a clump of trees. A small boy, perhaps his grandson, made a lot of noise, at which a whole bevy of small birds flew out of the trees. Two blasts of the shotgun, and we have a nice clutch of birds.

Then our host took us around his “little farm” where he grew every imagineable kind of vegetable and cereal.

As you can imagine, the three of us could hardly eat a tiny fraction of the barbecued duck, chicken, fish and titar. After we had eaten, the workers, plus the two gun-men, ate the rest.

I have never seen a more blatant display of feudalism – Zamindari in style. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help thinking that the workers would have been glad to lie prostrate at the Master’s feet in order to eat that wonderful food – such a change from daal/roti !

The hospitality that I received, on each and every trip, was fantastic, actually quite overwhelming. People went out of their way to ensure that I was comfortable, lacked nothing, had company etc etc. Having heard of my penchant for morning walks, my colleague in Lahore picked me up every morning at 5.30 a.m. to take me to a park, five different and quite magnificent parks, for a morning walk. Lahore at that hour, in late January, was heavenly.

Every day was packed with client visits from 8 am onwards, one client every hour. At each and every place there were huge plates of kababs, sweets, fruits, you name it. I had been warned that not eating at least a little bit would be a gross insult, and so I ate and ate and ate. Little bits, repeated hourly, add up to quite a bit. I used to stack up more than a normal lunch before the actual lunch. Then more client visits until 7 pm, followed by dinner. Several times I had to put two fingers in my throat and vomit, just so I could create some space in my stomach for the inevitable food at the next meeting.

I had a respite when I landed in Islamabad on a Friday, and was allowed a weekend at the Burban hotel in Murree. What a place ! It was an absolutely fantastic view. I was given a car and driver, and drove into Azad Kashmir. The driver told me “Aap to Urdu bole lete hain, shakal se bhi Mohajir lagtey hain, isliye koi massalla nahin hai, magar ye na kahiyega ki aap Hindustani hain, nahi to phauran katal ho jayenge”. So I kept my mouth shut and enjoyed the drive.

I was taken to a ceremony at a factory which was celebrating its third anniversary. It manufactured car A/Cs with Japanese technology. Speaker after speaker applauded the success in achieving a production of 10,000 pieces per year, with 37% deletion (percentage produced locally). I was aghast at the pitifully small volume, and even more appalled to find that the deletion was in the pipes and stuff – the main pieces of the A/C (compressor, condenser etc) were imported. No wonder, I thought, they don’t allow imports of identical A/Cs from India, used in identical Suzuki cars. which are a lot cheaper because they are 100% made in India.

On every trip I received gifts galore : numerous pieces of clothing, including salwar kameez sets, carpets, handicrafts etc. It was no use refusing the gifts. The invariable answer was : Yeh to kuch bhi nahi hain, aur aap to hamarey mehman hain. On my first trip, over and above the now-empty suitcase in which the booze had come in, I had to buy another one simply to pack the rest of the stuff. The carpets, of course, were packed separately.

Overall, all my trips to Pakistan were fantastic.

I had taken videos of Murree etc, and had tried to persuade my wife to take a holiday in Pakistan. Her response was, and has been “Are you crazy” ?

I spend a lot of money each year on holidays, to USA, Europe, South-east Asia etc. Each holiday costs about $ 20,000 for a month. I am sure I can get a much better holiday in Northern Pakistan for much less money. But, my wife refuses.

Recently she mentioned to me the case of Mukhtaran Mai, and asked me if I still wanted to visit Pakistan with her and our two daughters. I had no answer.

What a great pity that two cousin nations (if not brother nations) are in this situation.

I cannot but wonder what would have happened if Pandit Nehru had not made the most colossal mistake of his life – not getting the Kashmir issue settled in 1948, one way or the other. The limbo that India and Pakistan have been in since then has been the expensive wastage of resources and opportunities that one could ever think of, and the meter is still ticking.