Well over a decade back, Lahore’s golf team came to
Shimla to play the local team at the Naldehra Golf Club that is a few
kilometres beyond town. I’m not a player as such, but was a member of the club.
Someone in the government asked if I could take care of the ‘informal side of
things’ for the event.
The players had teed-off long before I reached the
course and I parked myself in the club house. There were a couple of men there
and the rest were ladies. I settled down for my favourite activity at events
like this, melting as best one could into the background and watching the world
go by. The ladies from the other side of the border, dripped rubies and
emeralds and breakfast was still to be served; the river-rapids and waterfalls
of diamonds were for dinner and Jimmy Choo had plugged into a benign market. Ladies
from this side, wives of the doctor, the lawyer, the bureaucrat and the soldier
were dressed in the way one would expect them to be at a sports event – smartly
and sensibly. One only wondered if this little display of a little obvious one-up-womanship
had been planned over bed tea.
Past the greens
and roughs of the course, a fairly large crowd had gathered from the villages
around to witness the big tamasha on
the course. One of the ladies learned over to another and said, “How can they
allow people like that near the course. This would never have been permitted in
Lahore.” Of course, they would not have been permitted. The multiplicity of the
‘us’ and the ‘them’ would become clearer over the following couple of days. It
would have taken just one cry from one of those spectators who had left their
fields and work, “Why are you playing them? They killed someone of my family in
the last war (or in Kargil).” That would have been the end of big tamasha.
The Naldehra Golf Course (Pic: Courtesy: Himachal Tourism)
Within a short while, one of the gentlemen from
Pakistan – and one with whom I was to spend a fair bit of time over the next
couple of days and learn a lot – sidled over. Like me, he was not playing. He
just gave his name then. Over the course of the next few hours it came out that
he was the secret service man from Pakistan keeping an eye on the brood. As I
was also sitting around, seemingly doing nothing, he wanted to check if I was
the Indian equivalent.
The Pakistan team was the who’s-who of that country. This
was an army, landowning and business elite. They and their brethren called all
the shots that needed calling. Between a couple of hundred families (if so
many), they not only controlled the country, they owned it. They made no bones
about this ownership and the fact came out repeatedly in their conversations.
What also came out was that the children of almost all were overseas or were
trying to move overseas.
“Will they come back?” someone asked.
“No. Not unless the countries they are in, revoke
their visas. There is no future for them in Pakistan.”
Here was Lesson No. 1:
Their stake in their own country was limited if they did not want their
own children there.
On all days, liquor was freely available and most of
the visitors had carried their own stock from Delhi’s duty-free shop. This
provided another revelation. Many could drink us under the table and they did
not sip, or even swig, they held a glass of whisky to their lips and knocked it
back like there would none again from where that came.
This was Lesson No. 2: If you were a somebody, you
could get whatever you wanted and get away with it – and be holier than thou while
you were at it. This was subsequently reinforced some years later, when on one
of my TV assignments, the British crew came via Pakistan and gleefully shared (complete
with sneakily taken live coverage on their phones) of a grand party they had
attended. This had been hosted by a person who is supposedly the most important
man in that country today and to whom many in that country turn to for succour.
The barmen were soldiers in uniform and had machine guns strapped to their
backs as they passed the whisky around.
By the time we
came to the last day of the golf tournament, one had become quite friendly with
some of them. They were far warmer than many of us, I may add. On the last
official dinner, one of them came up and mentioned how he had never had a drink
in a bar. This was something hard to fathom. So off we went. The gentleman was
nervous as we entered the bar. “I can drink
here? No will stop me? Will I be reported?”
Once he had thawed, he lined up about six shots of the whiskies
available in front of himself and lovingly had them all.
This became lesson No. 3: These are lives lived while constantly looking
over one’s shoulder. If you can get away with something while no one is
looking, go ahead.
Some years later, with a reference from my father’s
former school in Lahore, a couple came to visit us from that city. The man had
lived most of his life in Chicago and business losses had made him return to
Pakistan. Before Partition, his father had been with the Punjab government and
posted in Shimla; this was where he had grown.
We became good friends over the years and from our
numerous exchanges, came Lessons 4 and 5. “Pakistan,” he said “Is a country
without heroes. There are only two real ‘home-grown’ ones, Mohammed Ali Jinnah
and Imran Khan. For others, we have either to borrow them from India and deny
our shared heritage or turn to the wealthier and not necessarily desirable images
from other nations.”
Every country needs its heroes. These are people you
look up to and wish to emulate. This is missing and substitutes were found
lacking – or pointed in directions that only suited them.
“For all our friendships at a personal level, will
there be peace between our countries,” I asked, if simplistically.
“No,” was the answer. “India has taken a different
trajectory from Pakistan. We got our constitution long after you did. By then,
power had been taken and transferred to houses which will never let go of it.
Power is also dispersed and uncontrolled. Very importantly, there is no clear
power-centre in Pakistan. Who will you make peace with? The army? The ISI? The
hard-line religious leaders? The elected government which is weakest link of
all? If you make peace with one or two, it does not follow that the others will
accept or adhere to it.”
Not surprisingly, Kashmir came up time and again in
the course of our conversations. And whenever one thinks of what he said, it
rings true. Especially now. “There has to be definite border. This is here and
that is there. As long as the lines are blurred, everyone will exploit them.”
