Train to Pakistan 2004: In and Around Pindi

Man you jumped here and there and then where I dont know. You must practice more to write better next time.

Omar ji # 27 . . . the issue in question was on the stands before I travelled to Pakistan.

Please work on facts, not what you think.

Thank you.

hey ranajee -- thanks for pointing that out -- here`s that editorial from the daily times --


veeresh ji, read it carefully jee -- i think they are alluding to you in the first paragraph, third sentence

EDITORIAL: ‘Ungrateful Indian guests’

There is lot of anger in the columns of the Pakistani press about the ‘ungrateful’ Indians who came to watch cricket in Pakistan. All this is being attributed to a special issue by one of India’s weekly magazines which carried a story detailing the lives and activities of Pakistan’s upper crust. It appears that the journalists who wrote up the issue were more interested in the moral well-being of Pakistani society than in watching cricket and enjoying the extraordinary hospitality shown them here or even in comparing it with moral standards in their own country.

The popular press in Lahore has gone to town over the story. One editorial has reprimanded all those who welcomed the Indians and has abused a local hostess-writer. The magma of hatred, barely controlled by our India-haters, has come pouring out. The earlier rumours that most Indians came to Lahore, not to watch cricket but to sell goods, including gold, in Lahore’s black market have been recycled for fresh use. It was propagated at the time of the cricket series that Indian cricket-lovers had sold contraband goods worth Rs 3 billion, including ashes of cremated bodies for the sorcerers of Pakistan! Now of course the story has given more ammunition to the cleric in Pakistan to not only call for taking to task the morally bankrupt upper society but put a stop to people-to-people contact between India and Pakistan. The mullahs are already calling for ‘kowras’ (whip-lashings) on the backsides of those who thought of staging a cricket series with India and those who opened their hearts to the visiting Indians and offered them hospitality.

An ARY TV channel discussion Friday focussed on relations with India and the audience supported peace with India but said ‘no’ to cultural relations with it. The average Pakistani is infuriated by the story, its pictures blazoned on the first pages of the Urdu newspapers. Of course one has to be careful and not get carried away. The story is not representative of all the opinion in the Indian press. It would be wrong to ignore the positive and well-meaning articles written by Indian journalists and mount a collective attack from the Pakistani press on the basis of just one such story. That would be a major distortion of reality. And it would defeat the purpose of bringing Indians and Pakistanis together in order to ease the more complicated government-to-government relations. But it is appropriate to examine the psyche that presides over the factories of prejudice and hatred on both sides of the border.

What has been repeated in the story is an old pitfall that the Indians need to avoid while visiting Pakistan. At the behavioural level, it starts with surprise. (This also happens to many Americans and Europeans visiting Pakistan for the first time.) Instead of seeing a fundamentalist society beating up women for not wearing the veil and sending ‘wine-drinkers’ to jail like the Taliban, they see people living more or less like Indians back home where too some ‘dry’ states drink themselves silly without being punished. But the trouble with the critical Indian is that, unwittingly, he/she puts on the mantle of the unforgiving, sanctimonious Pakistani moaning about his sinning compatriots. He refuses to change his pre-formed view of Pakistani society. He is actually resentful that his definition of Pakistan is challenged by reality. He is always more comfortable with his own definition of the ‘other’ in life because that indirectly defines his own identity.

We in Pakistan should not fall to the easy temptation of retaliating against this attitude. Being in denial will not dissociate from us our Dionysian side, the not-so-controllable creative aspect of a putatively ideological society. What happens in Lahore and Karachi happens in New Delhi and Dhaka too. There is no dearth of negative piety-opinion in Pakistan about the sleazy goings-on in the Indian entertainment world. But we would be wrong if we concocted something like this about the goings-on in Bombay or Delhi. That would be a small thing to do. Let us ask our Indian guests to accept our reality the same way we are ready to accept theirs.

The truth of the matter is that 99 percent of the people on both sides have lived less-than-satisfactory lives in the last half century because India and Pakistan have cared more for fighting useless wars than for the well-being of their masses. Leaving the chattering classes aside for a while, there is no denying that both peoples would like the two states to live in peace and, if possible, in a cooperative, mutually profitable mode. The governments in New Delhi and Islamabad are on the verge of achieving the kind of bilateral relationship that the world wants for them. Let us not help the spoilers on both sides to win the day by derailing this process in a fit of anger. We have seen what such emotions and outlook have wrought during the wasted years of Indo-Pak hostility. *

Kabuliwallah 25 - thanks . . . I can understand where you are coming from and appreciate that you understand where I am coming from . . .

a) Lahore is given this big build-up by the page-3 wannabes in India, and to tell you the truth, it is nowhere near the hype. So maybe it is, for me, a victim of its own hype. It is just another city on the sub-Continent, and to enter Lahore through Mogulpura by train as a normal visitor (as different from protocol entries done via Lahore Airport). The comparision with Amritsar I make has to do with the vibrance of both these cities. I don`t think Amritsar is a dump anymore, I have business and personal linkages with Amritsar, do try to visit it again?

b) Getting swindled is the lot of the tourist most everywhere. Most tourism from India to Pakistan is very heavily ``sanitised`` and pre-controlled, so they really don`t get swindled. In my case, I found that the fact that I spoke Punjabi like a native made me non-tourist. That first, and then being an Indian next.

Yup, I am sending my travelogues ``by the day`` . . . and I hope they cntinue to be interesting. In retrospect, I wish I had spent more time . . . God knows when I shall get another opportunity.

veeresh,

I think you have been honest and truthful in your travelogue...you have called a spade, a spade and I am grateful for that....your travelogue highlights both the good and the bad, and all the places and the people, in fact most things in life have both...you have seen the place as a native born commoner sees it, not as some kid who becomes happy in a store when given a toffee by the bania and loses all perspective...your detractors here, armywallahs and editors, are notorious for their empty, illogical and nonsensical bravado and nationalistic inhumanism....so I wouldnt pay any heed to them....Pakistan, Lahore especially, is a beautiful country and I love many people there and am soon to have a nephew there...however, just like in most places, there are also some whose company I probably wouldnt enjoy like the aforementioned personalities...so just as it has wonderful things to boast of, like the wondrous beauty of its women for example, there are also things that are quite ugly like the bigotry and intolerance of some of its editors and armywallahs...so thanks again for not painting everything black or white...I would prefer this kind of honesty anyday than lies/non-information disguised as humility...by the way, when I saw Lahore, I too felt it didnt measure to the big Indian cities...but comparing it to Amristar did hurt...Amritsar really is a dump...God knows why the Gurus chose that place...Lucknow in its heyday is probably an apt comparison...just as an aside, my first impression of Pakistan was being swindled in both Lahore airport and then a few years later in Karachi airport...I had to put up with insults on the phone when the trunkcall operator found out where I was calling...but that didnt keep me from enjoying the rest of my trip in Pakistan in the company of some truly honest and open people...looking forward to your next installment...regards

Kabuli

veeresh,

I think you have been honest and truthful in your travelogue...you have called a spade, a spade and I am grateful for that....your travelogue highlights both the good and the bad, and all the places and the people, in fact most things in life have both...you have seen the place as a native born commoner sees it, not as some kid who becomes happy in a store when given a toffee by the bania and loses all perspective...your detractors here, armywallahs and editors, are notorious for their empty, illogical and nonsensical bravado and nationalistic inhumanism....so I wouldnt pay any heed to them....Pakistan, Lahore especially, is a beautiful country and I love many people there and am soon to have a nephew there...however, just like in most places, there are also some whose company I probably wouldnt enjoy like the aforementioned personalities...so just as it has wonderful things to boast of, like the wondrous beauty of its women for example, there are also things that are quite ugly like the bigotry and intolerance of some of its editors and armywallahs...so thanks again for not painting everything black or white...I would prefer this kind of honesty anyday than lies/non-information disguised as humility...by the way, when I saw Lahore, I too felt it didnt measure to the big Indian cities...but comparing it to Amristar did hurt...Amritsar really is a dump...God knows why the Gurus chose that place...Lucknow in its heyday is probably an apt comparison...just as an aside, my first impression of Pakistan was being swindled in both Lahore airport and then a few years later in Karachi airport...I had to put up with insults on the phone when the trunkcall operator found out where I was calling...but that didnt keep me from enjoying the rest of my trip in Pakistan in the company of some truly honest and open people...looking forward to your next installment...regards

Kabuli

``Actually I am surprised to see a proper paan-wallah in the lobby. ``

There used to be one at the Maurya Sheraton as well, at least upto 1995. Not in the main lobby but a bit to the to the side towards the Banquet room entrances.

Ranajee 21 - why on earth would I wish to defame the land of my forefathers?

Dost-Mittar 16 - well, I wish I had been able to stay on, but by the next day I had got the spooks on my tail, so . . .

Mr.Veeresh ji aka Ultra Patriot - Congratulations I think your Travelogue has been widely noticed in Pakistani press and probably you have been awarded the title of “Ungrateful Indian Guest” by Daily Times http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-5-2004_pg3_1

Being an optimistic I hope your efforts to defame Pakistan will not succeed and more Indians will come to Pakistan to receive that VIP treatment which they do not get anywhere else in this world (As written by TOI) and this peace process will continue.

Romair 11, for the purpose of this travelogue, please assume that I am not a guest but as much a son of the soil of Pakistan as my forefathers were. As such, therefore, my observations need to be as realistic and wide angle as I can get them to be. I never denied that truth hurts, especially in my own backyard.

Thank you.

NHK 9 & 10, sad to hear about Captain Shahabudin Ahmed, great human being and I shall be honoured as well as obliged if you or somebody can get a message to his family that I bow in front of the memory . . . I mean, here was a man who taught a generation of Indian & Pakistani shippies to have the confidence to walk tall and take on responsibilities as well as risks (in a day and age when ``foreign`` companies were still relying on European Captains).

On the trip, well, I had a grown up son looking after basics and was not driving, sans camera, so had a lot of time to scribble a lot of one-line notes.

The experiences are set down in chronological order, including the bribe I had to pay at Amritsar Railway Station on the return trip. I do not know if I can relaly do any analysis other than what others I met in Pakistan told me. I also have to protect identities, as these ranged from taxi drivers in US/UK with families ``in the hills`` to senior government people to Supreme Court Judges to media personalities to socialites . . . and of course, day to day people.

Towards being an ``artsy`` travelogue, a bit heavy, yes, I agree, and am sorry about that. The approach was to go slumming and walkabout down to earth during the day and better part of the night, and then sleep in a decent bed with a clean loo, basics of survival 101?

You must appreciate, NHK ji, that over 90% of the people I spoke to, Indians and Pakistanis combined, advised me not to go. And when they found out that Raghuveer was going along, some were livid, because they said I have condemned both of us to a lifetime of ``secondaries`` at various immigration counters. Well, so be it, and so I might as well make the best of it?

On the ``other ranks`` and their sentiments in Pakistan, Sir, you are ex-PAF, I gather, and there are a few ex-Pakistan Armed Forces people on this website too. I think some of you need to get to speak to them very very soon. There are serious psychological problems in your Armed Forces, especially in context with middle level leadership as well as explaining why/who they are supposed to fight. And if they discuss this in the open with obvious Indian media at Wagah, knowing that those Indians were journos (on the way back, I had a few journos riding along, and by then the spooks were on to us), then there is a problem somewhere.

veeresh
You and dost-mittar are both able to convey a sense of place and people. Good for us that you were both adventurous and didnot confine yourselves to drawing rooms and a/c cars.

Hi, I really enjoyed reading your article #4. It was very entertaining. All the best,
Ajeet (Taipei,Taiwan R.O.C.)

veeresh:
As usual you have captured very well the sights, sounds and smells the people you came in contact with. I wish I had been able to rub shoulders with the pindi-ne people the way you did.

Why do guys have to grumble if BJP was booted out by the indian people from power? We have to accept the fact that they lost because the majority of the country did not share their sentiments and claims of having done shining work in distributive justice and providing equitable benefits for greatest number of people across all the classes.
Perhaps their campaign itself was defective- not highlighting the short comings of the state governments in making negative contribution towards the efforts of the central government confused the voters- since every small lapse and ommission on part of the state governments in contributing to the miseries to the man on street was wrongly construed as a refutation of the india shining claims of the NDA.

Still, the best riposte to the India shining campaign was that TV clip which showed an un-employed youth striking down the claim of shining india and then making a resolve -`` Is baar to mujhe hi kuch karna hoga...`` -that sums up the resolve-

Thanks to all the citizens of my country! You are all wise guys, I love you all! Thanks for getting rid of rascals like Yashwant Sinha and Advani from the North and South Blocks! And thanks for NOT giving Sonia a full majority and letting their old rivals -the commies- to keep checks and balances on them!!!

Why do guys have to grumble if BJP was booted out by the indian people from power? We have to accept the fact that they lost because the majority of the country did not share their sentiments and claims of having done shining work in distributive justice and providing equitable benefits for greatest number of people across all the classes.
Perhaps their campaign itself was defective- not highlighting the short comings of the state governments in making negative contribution towards the efforts of the central government confused the voters- since every small lapse and ommission on part of the state governments in contributing to the miseries to the man on street was wrongly construed as a refutation of the india shining claims of the NDA.

Still, the best riposte to the India shining campaign was that TV clip which showed an un-employed youth striking down the claim of shining india and then making a resolve -`` Is baar to mujhe hi kuch karna hoga...`` -that sums up the resolve-

Thanks to all the citizens of my country! You are all wise guys, I love you all! Thanks for getting rid of rascals like Yashwant Sinha and Advani from the North and South Blocks! And thanks for NOT giving Sonia a full majority and letting their old rivals -the commies- to keep checks and balances on them!!!