NEW DELHI, 28 March 2004 — A successful bazaar is easily defined. You come for a pair of socks and leave with a pair of shoes. By those standards, Anarkali still works. The linger effect is induced by a seamless, ceaseless tide of people past shops that are as unchanging as the banks of a river protecting the flow. A cacophony of brands spills across open piles on the pavements’ edges, while the more respectable shops defend their reputation with order. Some of the spill is clearly spillover from the reject-markets of Bangkok and Dhaka, but that makes it good value, if you know how to bargain. In the midst of such economic cross-currents is a large island of dark, musty calm, a 19th century bookshop that stopped in the 20th only to pick up a few mementoes on its way to the 21st. Jinnah, in gleaming monocle and cigar, dominates one wall. A sign etched into the wood of furniture gleaming with age says, “Books are the only immortality”. The quote is from Gladstone; Jinnah would have approved.
Other portraits on walls include the great Urdu poets Iqbal, Hali, Mir and Shibli. This is appropriate, for half the books in the shop are in English and half in Urdu. The English section is filled with classics from Shakespeare to Shaw with one prominent leap backwards to Dante. The clientele is clearly the few students of English literature left in Lahore. I wonder however if anyone in Pakistan has actually read Dante’s Purgatory and its description of the Prophet of Islam. I almost bought Shaw’s Plays for Puritans but could not discover the courage to disturb the middle-aged manager hammering away diligently at his Underwood typewriter. I wonder where he gets the ribbon for that typewriter.
Outside, a few steps away, I notice Abdul Ghani’s kulfi in a glass box but Abdul is nowhere to be seen. His absence cures temptation. A cart trundles by with Sufi Gol Gappa. Time makes us cowards in the face of such offerings. I shuffle toward the clearing down the bazaar, the sanitized area called the Food Bazaar where Lahore’s biggest industry (eating) is at its finest. Traditionalists argue that the cooking is better in the Food Street at Gowalmandi, but that is a distinction I can leave to gourmets. I order brain curry with soft, creamy naan and ponder. Only a good Mussalman from the subcontinent would have seen brain and, instead of using it, turned it into curry.
On the other hand, it’s delicious.
***
Like the rest of Lahore, Anarkali is pulsating with Indians on the eve of the last one-dayer. The most interesting Indian stopped me opposite the Bible Society (with marble on its walls and armed guards at its gates). His first name was Parvin; his second name is a bit of a blur, but I do know that he is the first Indian to walk to Zimbabwe and has written two travel books in Marathi. The most perturbed Indian stopped me in the lobby of the Holiday Inn. He was the leader of a group visiting from Bombay, and his anxiety was at odds with the general air of bonhomie in the lobby. Since the difference between war and peace is only one mistake, it seemed as if there was after all going to be a bit of rain on the parade. He had a story to tell and wanted me to write it. Please. Definitely.
He had gone to buy some medicine and the shopkeeper refused to take any payment despite his insistence. His face grew even more agitated at the thought. I suggested that this was only another gesture of goodwill: Not to worry, Navjot Singh Sidhu had the same pleasant experience. No, no, he replied; I was getting it all wrong. He and his group had never dreamt of such hospitality when they left for Pakistan, their trip had overwhelmed them etc etc etc. Then? He wanted me to write and tell Pakistanis that they should not misunderstand if they did not get the same treatment in India. Indians are hospitable too, but he could not imagine a shopkeeper not taking payment in India!
The visa figures vary with each conversation, but it is probable that by the time the cricket is over more than 15,000 Indians will have visited Pakistan for the first time. By the third week of April, in that case, Pakistan will have 15,000 goodwill ambassadors in India. The key has been spontaneity and sustenance. You might be able to put on a friendly act for a day, but no government can order a nation to embrace another. Imran Khan made a piquant point when he recalled his first visit to India as a leader of his celebrated team a generation ago. He said he was surprised to find that Indians did not have horns on their heads. Demonization was the official policy on both sides of the wall that went up after the war of 1965. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf have given human beings a chance to be human, and look at the magnificent energy that they have released.
***
It was a season of laughter in Lahore. Fortunately, most of the Punjabi jokes are unprintable. There is no joke better than the one at your own expense. Lahoris are as delighted to roar at the problems of Pakistan as they are to tease you about India. Ever since the Punjab government sent out a directive that offices must close for the zuhr (afternoon) prayers, and the Frontier government shut down everything for all the five prayers of the day, this is the story making the rounds. For those who do not know Punjabi, the word puttar might officially mean “son” but you could fill a dictionary page with its various inflexions.
***
The one unstated fear is that it might be too good to last. The hawks have grown silent, the sharks turned sullen. But they await their moment. The optimum place for a shark is naturally the think tank, where he swims in circles. The shark is not particular about which hand to bite; the one that feeds him is as vulnerable. He is whetting his appetite for August, when the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan will meet for a long-interrupted round of talks.
The standard explanation for the Vajpayee peace initiative in such circles is that he is only doing it to win elections. The paradox in this assumption is totally lost on the hawks of the air and the sharks of the sea. If a prime minister can win an election in India on a call for peace, then it obviously means that the Indian wants peace. This in turn rather spikes the canard that every Indian hates Pakistan and wants its destruction. Such an answer is treated as some clever Brahminical ploy to confuse honest men. August is important for both India and Pakistan because both will have tested each other’s commitment by then. Delhi will have checked the levels of cross-border terrorist activity through a summer, when the valley routes are more amenable thanks to the warm weather. And Islamabad will have evidence about the seriousness with which New Delhi is willing to engage on Kashmir. By June Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani will have completed his third round of talks with the Hurriyat, and reports from participants suggest that initial wariness has matured into candor and even warmth. The problem with hawks and sharks is that they believe that peace mongers are softies and pushovers, who float in some unreal dream world while they are the custodians of the cold, hard truth. But then neither a hawk nor a shark can possibly have his feet on the ground.
Vajpayee and Musharraf know the size of the challenge. Peace is a noble idea that has to be converted into a practical reality. The first change must come in the mind. The mind is persuaded through experience. Experience can only come through opportunity. If the SAARC conference was an opportunity for the elites to meet, then cricket was an opportunity for the people to meet. There was apprehension before the SAARC, there was apprehension before cricket. We did not know the result of SAARC till the last minute; quite the same thing happened in cricket. There was a warm glow after SAARC, there is a warm glow after cricket. There were saboteurs who nearly got their target in Islamabad before SAARC; there will doubtless be saboteurs who will try and destroy the options of August and beyond. Commitment will be tested with harsh questions. Both sport and diplomacy are best when conducted with honor. If that prevails, the future will be freed from the past.
***
The most familiar question in Pakistan was an obvious one: Who will win the elections? I had a standard answer: We are headed for our first Egyptian poll. An Egyptian election is one in which the results are known before the votes are polled.
