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People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision, so potent can be his words. So said American author John C Maxwell.

Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf may not have been the best leader ever, but his words held sway over the people like no one else. I realised this on my visit to the country in 2003-04, when the Indian cricket team was to visit Pakistan five years after the disintegration of cricketing relations between the countries.

A week before the start of the five one-day and three Test matches, I visited most of the cricketing venues in Pakistan. The sojourn was an eye-opener. My being an Indian proved an impediment as no one bothered to converse with me. In fact, a Multan schoolkid enquired why India asked for a partition in 1947. When I asked her who told her this, she laid her claim to the knowledge on history books.

This phlegmatic milieu was to change soon. On the day of the arrival of the Indian cricket team members and onlookers, the then president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, addressed the nation on television. With his trademark oratory, he dwelt on how cricket can and will iron out differences between Indians and Pakistanis and how he intended to "let us show them what Islamic hospitality is all about and that we can express love better than any Indian".

The utterances worked like magic. The next 41 days were near-blissful for me. I realised that the feeling of love and hatred can be invoked or provoked by a single catalyst like an address by a charismatic leader. Musharraf was an apotheosis of such a leader and succeeded in exhorting his countrymen into giving a warm welcome.

The sea-change in the behaviour of the Pakistani public was apparent. Not only the Indian players, even spectators from across the border were accorded royal treatment. Pakistanis offered free cold drinks, snacks, and flowers. Even autorickshaw and cycle-rickshaw drivers declined money from Indian passengers. When I went to shop for some Punjabi suits for my wife, along with Mandira Bedi and Murali Karthik, at the Anarkali market in Lahore, it turned out to be my best shopping experience ever, surpassing my visit to Harrods in London.

Such is the power of one address to the nation — one address that coalesced a disparate nation into one, converting the so-called hostile behaviour into resplendent hospitality. Which forces me to think, are our own leaders capable of such overwhelmingly inspirational oratory?