Our Man In Islamabad

Continued from PartIV

PROLOGUE
The ease and range of intermodal options with which we the people can now travel in and out of our ownsub-continent seems to be inversely proportional to the advancements in similar travel for us in the rest ofthe world. .

Till even a few decades ago, we could buy a seat on a bus from London to Delhi via Istanbul, or hitch-hiketo Kuwait if an old Jawa bought for scrap value packed up somewhere in Iran. If you felt the urge to go toEurope or the Far East or Africa, you could easily book deck or cabin space on a variety ofcargo-cum-passenger ships, and motivate a look at the Suez Canal or Malacca Straits on the way. Trains wereworking their way into West and East Pakistan, as well as Nepal, and incredible as it may sound today, atrain-steamer linkage was the best option for getting to Ceylon. Burma, of course, was a few days boat rideaway.

And then of course, there were those who could afford cars. Not the reliable and efficient ones from ourcurrent era, but a vast variety without authorised manufacturer-provided service back-up en route, completewith punctured tyres and overheated engines, which made it through Nepal to Tibet and beyond, or acrossAfghanistan on one side or Burma on the other. Without the benefit of butyl rubber tubes and coolant in closedcircuit radiator systems.

Another option. Not just for pilgrims, but also for migrants: sailing across the oceans to nearby maritimecountries by taking a working berth on a "dhow" or other form of sailing boat was just perfect. Yougot to learn to fish, and live off the elements, too.

Today, the default option is "only by air", and for anybody who has friends and family in Indiaor Pakistan, the absolute sheer difficulty in securing a seat in and out, especially as this article hits thescreens, destroys most of the fun of travel. What use is this evolution of technology to me, if I can not havea choice? Doesn't it hit others too, this creeping isolation we seem to be inflicting on ourselves? It hitsme, sure, when I land at any European or American or Austral-Asian airport, or even African airport, andrealise that I am not bound anymore by an "only by air" option.

What's more, how do I really educate myself if I don't travel?

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SENTIMENT
Yes, till as recently as the years between the first and second world wars, India used to export engineeringgoods as well as foodgrains to destinations like the Americas. And now I see how engineering products andprocessed foods from India are making their mark all over the world, again. Not just the automobile componentsand consumer goods, but Paan Parag and also Amul milk products, to give two branded examples.

And if the western world feels that Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are valid consumer products, then what's wrongwith branded tobacco powder from India?

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Pre-Dawn, 0330-0800, 17 April, 2004

I wake up very very early while Raghu is still fast asleep, to keep an appointment with yet another taxidriver, a Punjabi one this time. Bathe with a hotel soap made in Tibet, a first for me. Walk quietly out ofthe hotel lobby side door in the dark, while the lone night clerk is fast asleep on a settee. Rendezvous acouple of hundred metres away with "HP". Another Suzuki-800, gas and petrol options. Quite old, butmaintained well and kept clean, the engine sounds very smooth, on song. You know that this is a car that hasbeen through a lot, but will run forever too.

There are many personal targets to try to achieve in the next three hours. I need to try to meet with thedriver's family, scared to admit whether they were Hindus or Sikhs before 1947. I need to try to visualise whythe poetry from my forefather's days sang more about love and joy and the Jhelum and the Ravi and the Chenaband less about Mecca / Medina / Amritsar / Patna / Banaras / Hardwar / Jerusalem. And I need to be driving acar on the GT Road, not some impersonal motorway, as we head for a point close to the ceasefire line, about anhour and a half roughly South East of Pindi.

Whatever be the faith "HP" subscribes to currently, the driving style is pure death-wish Punjabi.One hand on the steering wheel, and the other in a combination of roles, from smoking to cell-phone network,seeking to changing gears to fiddling with stuff on the dashboard to repeatedly trying to make the stereoshriek louder. In between there are the eye-contact challenges to other road users as well as the flashinglight and hand signals about the presence or not of a variety of "authorities" on the road. He triesto overtake overladen trucks from either side as well as underneath, at which point I ask him to let me drive.Everybody and everything else on the road is a "putroh".

I can write a complete novel about this brief drive on the GT Road, but shall still not be able to dojustice.

In brief, I note that the level of creativity displayed in Pakistan, in adapting three-wheelers,four-wheelers and larger commercial vehicles for specific usages, is simply amazing. Maintenance is obviouslya big thing, even the oldest of trucks and buses based on long-defunct Bedford models seem to be in greatshape. There is this fascination for washing and keeping wheel rims in pristine condition, even if the truckhas just come through muddy routes. And as for the engines, they do seem to work on them in Pakistan. I ask tosee a few at a rest-stop, the true litmus test of pride in ownership of a truck or a bus is to look below thehood. Drivers would walk around and show me how dry the exhaust pipes on their trucks were, that is the levelof pride we are talking about here.

There is no better way of making friends with the salt of the roads on the sub-continent than sharing aglass of tea while exchanging notes on overloading capabilities and pulling powers on steep gradients. Ilearnt this from a Japanese engineer who used to work for Suzuki, in India and Pakistan, by the way.

Older two-wheelers in up-country Pakistan, on the other hand, appear to be crudely re-structured and badlymaintained. One reason could be that the basic two-stroke engine is now very cheap worldwide, does not requiremuch maintenance, and is probably treated like a disposable ball pen. Use and throw away. This, by the way, isat variance with the exquisitely maintained new bikes I have seen in Lahore and Islamabad.

Deal with " HP" is that at a point about an hour out of Pindi, we shall attempt to turn off on toa side road connecting towards the forgotten, fabled and restricted "Mughal Road" that late nightstories told me moved along the West Bank of the Jhelum. The reality of being so close to the ceasefire linehits you when a cousin of the driver meets up with us soon after the turn-off, and tells us that we better nottry to head East of GT Road today. Checking is on, and in addition, I am wearing trousers. Traffic rules inthis area are apparently so strict that even fitting a stereo in a taxi can lead to a challan. Leave alone thedocuments required to be there in the first case.

We head back for Pindi. On the way back, "HP" and his young cousin and I are discussing religionas well as the subject of second and third generation converts in Pakistan, and we come to an agreement thatwhile economic, geographical and political power play a role in the demographics of religion, at heart and inour minds most of us are animists and nature- worshippers anyway, seeking a happy and forgiving God. We leaveit at that. Frankly, as I am told, there is no shortage of shrines to holy men of all sorts on the roads inPakistan, either.

The other rather deep insight I get from this short deviation is that within the second and thirdgeneration converted community in Pakistan, there seems to be a great desire to know about their roots. Theyseem to be convinced, says "HP", that a lot of the reports on bravery by both the attackers andattacked were just so much hot air. Conversion in Pakistan was often a case of getting illiterates to recite kalmasand then forcing beef into starving mouths on tired bodies already looted, running or hiding for their andtheir children's lives from mobs. If so many were killed, Malik Sahib, where are the bones? asked"HP", and as a taxi-driver, he seemed to know, that even now they were discovering bones in wellsand riverbeds in Pakistan of Greeks who had died centuries ago in the Indus Valley, and Jews in Europeslaughtered during the second world war in kilns. Where were the bones, Malik Sahib, in Pakistan and India, ifso many perished in 1947? And if all of them did not perish, then where did they go, more importantly, whotook their properties?

On the way back, just on the GT Road itself, before Pindi, I am shown a huge big new "DefenceColony" coming up. "HP" tells me about the foreigners who used to come here for archeologicaldigs. The land here was known as sacred from the days of the Buddhists. There is supposed to be a very bigBuddhist stupa nearby, dating to before Christ; but we cannot go there either, all Defence land. Nowthere are bulldozers, digging foundations over history.

Partition, according to "HP", was more a case of stronger people from within the community andfrom within the religion, forcing the weaker out rather than a religious exchange. Exchanging the weak andpoor of one side for the other, while the rich grabbed whatever they wanted anyway. Knowing a bit about thesubject from the India-end of things, I tend to agree. Here again I find that particular sentiment - thoseimpacted by partition simply don't want to lead to it again. Those who hope to benefit from such fissures,however, seem to want more. There is a mathematical truth in the way " HP" explains it to me."HP" drops me off on the road outside the hotel.

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0830 - 1300, 17 April 2004

Raghu is just stirring, and enjoying the multiple channel "V" options on the hotel cable TV. I amgoing through a second wash-up, non air-con travel on the GT Road is, well, dusty. Reception has sent upcopies of all three English newspapers, and the headlines are full of the cricket results. There is much angstabout the way the Pakistanis have played, and some of the sarcasm is terribly excellent in its wit. There hasbeen another blast in Peshawar, it seems. Cinema hall owners in the area are protesting at the lack ofbusiness, and have stopped using their air-conditioners.

Breakfast is, once again, divine ultra-butter soaked parathas with thick omelettes. Regardless ofhow they are spelt, we go through two rounds each, washed down with generous helpings of tea. We present thestaff of the hotel with a box each of kaju (cashew) katli and anjir burfee. The anjir(fig) sweets, especially, seem to have them very delighted. There is a joy in giving and receiving over hereat the Islamabad Regency Hotel.

Morning, up to noon, is "free time" for Raghu and me to go walk about downtown Islamabad. Fromthe hotel, we take a taxi past our now dear old friend, the venerable Kashmir Chowk, now no longer sporting agarish nuclear weapon pointed at, well, us. From there we head for this lovely park, at night it looked verywell lit and beautiful, and by day is indeed clean and expansive too. But highly empty, still too early. Thetaxi then drops us at Melody, the first of the many "Blue Areas" that we shall visit that day.(Note: Blue area is the commercial area within each "block" in Islamabad)

At Melody we check our mail, 25 rupees gets you an hour of decent speed broadband in a clean web cafe.Nothing much happening at Melody--a couple of bored carpets-sellers in a huge shop are having a lazy day, andinvite us in for a cuppa when we tell them we are from Hind. The tea is early morning kahwa, rich, thick andultra sweet. The conversation is tinged with sorrow, as they speak about relatives in Srinagar. The humour isabout how Indian journalists have been tramping all over the country for the last few months, and as yet theirsale of carpets has not increased.

From there, after being shown the cinema that was burnt down less than a year ago as though it is yetanother tourist attraction, we head for the next Blue Area on our "must visit" list, and that isAbpara. On the way there, we walk past what appears to be the holding grounds for a night market, with stallsgoing through the complete repertoire of food and other pavement kind of shopping. For the first and only timein Islamabad, we see an open drain full of garbage, blocked and choked solid with polythene. Sure enough, foodmarkets are the same everywhere.

Next to this open market is a bus stand, mini-buses and vans headed North, it appears. Traffic police hereseem to have an ongoing losing battle as small vans block bigger mini-buses which in turn don't let the fullsize Varan buses past them. I take time out to discuss water-melons with a huge big man selling them from asmall Maruti pick-up truck. His price is about 15 rupees a kilo. I ask him why they are so expensive, he asksme how much I am willing to pay. I realise that I am about to buy a water melon I don't need, so I beat ahasty retreat while the price drops sharply, in loud Punjabi, behind me.

And before we know it, walking through row after row of quiet tree-lined streets with huge houses set back,bingo, we are at Abpara.

One side of the front of this stretch has lots of automobile dealers. And big shops. And hotels. Further upthere seem to be travel agents and the Hotel Ambassador. At the rear there are these shops selling everything.I wish that we were out shopping, we would have had things to buy here, and not just dry fruit. There seem tobe a large amount of handicraft items available here, but since I do not know anything about the subject, Ijust let it ride.

And then there is the food. Everything. Tandoori, curried, fried, coloured, be they jalebis or chicken ormystery meat, they are all there. This concept of having the butcher, the sweetmeat and the meat all withinthe same shop seems standard in Pakistan, but is something not so common to us Indians.

With the freedom of youth on his side, Raghu goes at the food, fingers and mouth. With the girth of age onmy side, I leave him be, set up an appointment to meet at a particular shop called "Illusions" at"Jinnah Super" after an hour, and move forward on my own. I am keen to get a closer look at the carshowrooms, and check out the cars as well as their prices. Well, prices are between 50% and double more thanwhat the equivalent models sell for, on the road, in India, all other things being equal. The tyres on all thenew cars are not Indian. The tyres on most of the in-use cars parked on the street appear to be Indian.

At some spots, I am approached by people sitting behind type-writers offering their services for visaapplications. Most shops and establishments have at least one heavily armed guard parked in front, and at someplaces, armed guards seem to be awaiting movements, standing bye in cars parked outside. By contrast, thereare very few uniformed policemen or government type cars visible.

Raghu and I connect again, and decide to move on towards Jinnah and Jinnah Super, the swanky Blue Area. Forthat, we need to hop into another cab. By now, Raghu is negotiating taxi prices, and he does manage to bargainwell.

Here again, we separate, agreeing to meet at Pizza Hut for lunch. I move around the bookshops, Raghu movesaround the music stores. I continue to be amazed at the high price of books and periodicals in Pakistan. Atevery bookshop I end up meeting owners who seem to know more about Old Delhi, thanks to their regular visits,than I do.

At Pizza Hut (or is it Pizza King?) we meet up, grab a quick bite of some ersatz Italian-American stuff,and write good things about them in their service report. There is a Lime Juice-cum-sprite-cum Rooh-Afza kindof combo drink which is very tasty indeed, so we have seconds. We are now ready for the next part of our day,which is to head towards Murree, to visit Lawrence School.

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1300-1600, 17 April 2004

We reach a group of taxi drivers, and negotiate a round trip rate of 800/- rupees for a return trip toMurree and back.