Pakistan, a Different Country!

Benazir selling Benazir Chai or Benazir paan massalla!

The Army crime syndicate in Pakistan is down but not out by any means. City after city and village after village, as I traveled through the heart of Pakistan, I got one overwhelming message…people can’t stand the army anymore but also are realistic enough to understand that it will take a lot to get rid of the army from the politics and break the power structure the army has created over the years. My impression was that this structure has been damaged and is deeply hurt in Pakistan.

The night before Benazir’s chehlum in Larkana, a young man, barely in his early twenties, challenged me to describe the mood in Sindh and on hearing my take claimed that I have lost touch with Sindh after living away for so many years. Driving with a candidate to attend election rallies and public meetings, the slogans I heard were against the army and listened to the speeches that would have had intelligence agencies declare people anti-state when I lived in Sindh. I knew of many friends who suffered years in jail for saying a lot less. Larkana has become a crowded city after her death. There were people everywhere. Benazir is now remembered as a Rani, a princess and soon will turn in to the first woman Saint in Pakistan.

While kidding with many young Sindhis Turks, I blamed them for Benazir’s death as they had taken a hard-line on her arrival which caused her breakup with the army. The kids just laughed. I then asked them how are they going to treat Asif Zardari? Mostly the answer was: he better listen to us or he too will take the Liaquat Bagh route!

I was told the Sindhi nationalism as I knew it has since died its natural death but the Peoples Party in Sindh is really the Sindhi Nationalist Party. Young Sindhis believe in Pakistan but would not hesitate to break away if they felt the need for it. No one thinks about joining with India as the old Sindhi Nationalists used to dream of but an independent Sindh would be a much preferred option. Young Sindhis are now joining the army and some are climbing the ranks pretty fast.

Lahore and Pindi were in full election mould. Pictures of candidates and the leaders were on pretty much every space that was available on walls and hoardings. Benazir was so prominently displayed in so many different poses that often I felt she was the only movie star in town. Knowing the Punjabi penchant for hero worshipping and taking it to the extreme, I felt that soon they will have Benazir selling Benazir Chai or Benazir paan massalla to her followers in Punjab.

While Pindi is bursting through the seams, Islamabad looked its best from the margalla hills and the Manal restaurant where I had lunch with an old flame. We had problems keeping our hands to ourselves despite couple of grown kids on both sides.

Peshawar is just another story. I have some great memories of that city which I last visited in 1987 for just a few hours. This time around, I barely had a few hours to spend in Peshawar again. I asked my friends to drive me around the city while we talked. I was unable to recognize the city. New shopping malls in Saddar, my old hang out hotel Deans now a shopping mall and office complex. The Green hotel looked different. The cinema in Saddar where I used to smoke charas during the shows was gone too. The great shopping areas in Hayatabad with Sikh shop owners and Sikh Hakims just belied all the storylines about Peshawar and Peshawaris living in fear of Taliban and the suicide bombers. New six lane roads, a ring road and the Pushtoon car and bus drivers had my heart in my throat almost every time I was on the road. Peshawar is no more a sleepy town it used to be in the 70s and 80s, the life in the city is hectic and the traffic has increased manifolds like in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Islamabad! If someone now tells me that Peshawar is going down to Taliban, I would slap that person hard enough to show fingerprints all over his/her cheeks. Though I must admit the uncertainty of the suicide bombers had surely put some dent on the city’s rep.

Peshawar University looked as beautiful and unspoiled as it was a long time ago. The kids in Islamia College were still wearing sherwanis and the girls in their chadors looked as pretty as ever. Girls were clearly noticeable in pretty much all areas, some did not care very much about chador covering the heads or not. I found many of them walking alone unescorted contrary to the stories that I had heard and believed. Peshawar has extended well beyond Gul Bahar colony on the GT road on the east. Hayatabad on the west, it seems, is as big as Peshawar itself right next to the tribal area. Hayatabad was a small development when I last saw that, this time around I was looking at houses as big and as great looking as one can find in Defense or Clifton, Karachi or some areas in Islamabad and Lahore.

This was just another Pakistan. Things have changed so drastically between my visits that often I was lost in the areas where I grew up in Karachi and Hyderabad. New highways, bright shining roads or just the amount of construction overwhelmed me. The face of Karachi is changing, Hyderabad still lags behind but lots of changes had already made me feel good about that city.

Lahore or at least the parts of Lahore that I saw showed me that it is perhaps the best city to live in Pakistan right now. Lahore looked better than Karachi and Islamabad both and traffic too was a little less crazy. My only long distance drive was from Pindi to Peshawar and back. The Daewoo bus took the GT road which is now a four lane highway. The Bus conductor was a young, petit, pretty, and apparently Pathan/Hazara girl in her 20s. That was a big no-no (especially in NWFP) during the old days but now seemed common. I kept cracking jokes with her to her amusement. I guess age allows one to be a little bold with young girls! The driver turned off the video and the music upon entering NWFP. When I asked the conductor to play it back she said, “Na!na!! mullah ghussa karega!”

My return journey on M1 was just fabulous. M1 is a six lane highway that can leave many highways in the West to dust. I took a Mercedes van on my return journey and the driver followed all the traffic rules for lane changes and passing other traffic. I thanked him for excellent driving and gave him a great tip for just making my life easy on Pakistani roads!

In between, I took a short trip to Taxila museum and the monasteries in the area. My driver cum guide had worked in Taxila for years and knew the area inside out. Still I used professional guides on every site. I was just a teenager when I first visited Taxila and never caught on the significance of the archaeological sites there. Walking in Sirkap, climbing stairs to Jaulian or checking out the monastery in Mohra Moradu just had another feel to it. At Mohra Moradu, I met an interesting man. Throughout the drive from Pindi, my driver kept talking about a Scotsman living in Mohra for the last forty years. The driver thought he was some sort of a saint and took me to his place. This long haired, bearded Scotsman, Luqman called his place a Khanqah! Turned out this Luqman guy was actually a Canadian from the Montréal area. I had visited Montréal just in August-Sept for three weeks so we started talking about the changes in Montréal. He not only had access to the Net but was also connected to his friends in Ohio via skype! He invited me to his Olive Garden just above the Mohra monastery, which I declined citing lack of time.

Driving down from the Taxila museum to Jaulian, I, all of a sudden, found myself on a well paved and well maintained road. I thought the quality of the construction was due to the tourist traffic to Jaulian. But it turned out just above Jaulian, the Pak army maintains a big ammo dump. I had visited some US army dumps in New Mexico and the layout of the area looked very familiar to the missiles/nuke sites in New Mexico. Once I climbed the mountains and in Jaulian, using Binoculars, I tried to spot the entrance and climbed farther than the guide would allow me to take pictures. It appeared that there were two sites both had unmarked cars, buses and trucks parked there. Nothing would disclose that they were military sites. However, it was clear that the army was hiding something there. One can hazard many guesses but hoarding missiles and nukes next to the prime archaeological sites could only be a Pak army idea!

The night after the elections, my old friends got together in a Clifton house of a friend for a party. I had taken two bottles of Chivas with me from the US but these guys were already loaded with all brands of scotch. The eight of us had our last party in a Khairpur rest house sometime in 1983. That night we could only get cheap Indian whiskey but things have changed. All were successful and loaded with money now. In the Khairpur rest house we had four girls serving us and in 2008 in Karachi, eight girls were assigned to the party. The service was good, drinks and food was fabulous. Politics again was the main topic as all of us are still attached to the politics in many different ways. We broke up at about three in the morning and would probably see each other on my next visit, whenever that happens.

Elections

Before the elections the discussions in Larkana and the other places were that there would not be much rigging in Sindh or NWFP but most of the rigging would take place in Punjab and that too against Nawaz Sharif. No one expected Nawaz to bag more than 40 seats and after rigging the number of seats for N league was expected to be around 15-20. On the night of the elections, it became clear that either the pro Mush forces deceived themselves or there was some hidden hand that prevented rigging. Still, the consensus was that the PPP would be forced to form coalition with parties minus Nawaz. This still can happen but right now if the PPP tried to shake hands with Mushraf, expectations are that the PPP would break apart right away! Everyone is now watching the changing situation and they are many a slip!

However, this election would go down in the Pakistan history as the most rigged election ever. In Karachi and in parts of Sindh, people wherever they could have, rigged the whole thing. In Karachi, MQM was unable to bring out its supporters to vote and the motivated PPP voters were showing up at every polling station, on seeing that the MQM high command just decided to take over the polling stations and the results in Karachi are more dubious than any other place in Pakistan!

All other parties contested elections on some program and with some agenda. PPP for democracy, PML(N) for Judges, ANP for provincial autonomy and against the MMA but MQM really had no agenda, no program and offered nothing to its voters and thus its voters stayed away from the polling booths. More on elections later!

(http://chowk.com/articles/13666)