The diary of a border crosser

Three weeks ago I took a flight from Delhi to Lahore, and I thought about the 60 times I must have taken that flight in the last 15 years: I wondered what these border crossings were adding up to.

Nothing is being added since I am still the only border crosser, if you take out all the celebs, the powers heading ngos, the retd generals and brigadiers, Mahesh Bhatt, and some of the very rich who like to do it. Last time I went to Lahore, Gulzar was on the flight, coming back to Delhi this time it was Farida Khanum. Sure, I cross as a Canadian, but I would never imagined that all these years later border crossings would still be imaginary to reasonably ordinary professionals, and that if I keep doing it I will still be burdened with telling one side what is going on on the other.

Though these days seeing what is going on in Pakistan still doesn't help comprehension. I landed in Lahore on June 24th, which happened to be when the Chief Justice was landing from Islamabad. At the stunning Lahore airport, I saw a human chain of male protestors, their tugging at an invisible rope was a muscular lyric. I turned my face away, unsettled by this image of vulnerability and spine. Mine was a reflexive faithlessness towards all things in the land of the military. I was also discomfited by the state of the art airport, when really Lahore should be provincial after Delhi and Mumbai,

Two weeks later the General blinked and justice was reinstated and not one Indian commentator had been willing to call the lawyer's victory for all the time it had been happening. But Lahore was all for it, all along. Every single house I visited had its TV on to the drama of the CJ's rallies and yatras, and when news would be blacked out, say when the CJ was visiting Multan, then stunning political commentary would come up in the talk shows.

And I had thought i had already identified the revolution of the year (Mayawati in UP).

My stints in Pakistan should have made me a believer in the coming revolution, instead I developed a knee jerk teary-eyedness when listening to revolutionary Faiz.

If a young  Indian journalist were able to be an intern, trainee, or get a job at a Lahore, of Karachi paper, say like for a year in '92 when a new paper had come to Lahore, called the Frontier Post, edited by Khaled Ahmed with young writers, Beena Sarwar, Bilal Minto, Aamer Ahmed Khan, Sunny Razvi, Nadira Iqbal (now Lady Naipaul), Farjad Nabi, and among the old that were persuaded to write were  I A Rehman, Intizar Hussain, Ahmed Bashir, you would have been around a serious amount of talent, imagination and bloody-minded idiosyncracy. Or of course that year one could have spent in Karachi at the Herald with the magnificent Sherry Rehman as your Editor. I have not taken any of these names in vain, and only those who can be invoked on google, the rest lie with  the best memories.

Music in Lahore in those days were concerts by Junoon and Adnan Sami, and  Nusrat, Abida, Reshma several times a month, if you so desired. Farida Khanum, Madam Noor Jehan, Malika Pukhraj, Iqbal Bano, all lived full or part-time in Lahore  and as an Indian you could crash the basant party of the diva of your choice, and swoon over their nieces and nephews as well. 

No bigger bacchanalia exists in the subcontinent than basant in Lahore. Ask Zee executives, or the Mumbai chapter of the Young Entreprenuers's club (YEO). They can't deny it, I partied with them.

This time too as each time in a Pakistani bookstore not in a 5-star hotel I wasn't disappointed. At Variety book store in Liberty Market Lahore (by the way they have renamed the landmark intersection there as Madame Noor Jehan Chowk, an homage to the greatest icon of all kinds of independence-even here in India they should replace Republic day with her name, since what of Nehru, Gandhi or Mohammed Iqbal can match what she said of independence:  'My jewels and my lovers are be-hisaab'?) the book in the window was Military Inc, in which the author not only tells all on what the Army owns but also names generals.

I have always been taken aback by the books in Pak bookstores. Somehow Meeraji, N. M Rashed, Faiz, Manto, Iqbal's Reconstruction of Islamic Religious Thought, are never out of print, but on each visit I have come across contemporary titles that make mincemeat out of the ideology of Pakistan (or as they say there: 'Nazaryat-e-Pakistan)--Mushtaq Gazdar's History of Pakistan Cinema, or I. H Burney's 'No Illusions, Some Hopes and Fears,' a collection of his editorials from Outlook, a Karachi-based magazine that was closed down first by Ayub, then by Bhutto.

It should be no surprise then that after such world class establishment bashing, the day will come when the establishment will have a few black eyes and tap desultorily at its glass jaw. On this trip I heard persistent rumours that in the Army cantonments of Punjab, remember that is where the Army is from, orders have been passed that no one should venture into villages and towns in uniform, so as to avoid a thrashing.

In the 2000s, when it was film, video, and television, not writing, that was the thing to be doing,  it was better to be in Karachi. Five years ago Indus Vision was starting, which now is one of many channels that show not-to-missed, except that we do, Karachi rock and pop. I did visit then, but it was a curtailed trip so I can't fill in the details about the scene, though I wish I had been to one of the raves on Paradise Point, French Beach, Sandspit or Hawkes Bay, or Gadani, or wherever on that majestic Makran coastline they happen.

What the Lal Masjid episode shows to Indians is that for the reasonable and liberal Pakistani and Indian have the same raqeeb: the politicking Pak Army and the jihadi.  As India feels good about itself at 60, so it should about these Pakistanis, since both want to push back common enemies. These Pakistanis are the future Canadians to India's America.

To hurry that process, the Indian high commission in Islamabad should read the Pak papers, watch their TV, remember all the names that are fighting for 'rule of law,' the 'upholding of the constitution,', and 'non-talibanization,' -- yes, this is what the high commission is supposed to be doing anyway-- but they should do it diligently since they should issue visas to these Pakistanis, and whoever THEY recommend. 'Welcome, you and your pals come and go as you like,'  should be India's birthday gift to these Pakistanis. Happy Birthday, we acknowledge that you have arrived.