lahore and a 4 min film?

shuddha sent this today...

dear Joy, Iram, Taha and Anand,



you guys could think (time permitting of course) of sending something

simple, short and effective for this, either individually, or together,

in small groups, or both







cheers



Shuddha



-------- Original Message --------

Subject:         aar paar 3: call for entries

Date:         Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:34:42 -0700 (PDT)

From:         h mulji <hmulji@yahoo.com>

To:         hmulji@yahoo.com







 /Please circulate widely | Apologies for cross postings/



* *



*Aar** Paar  3*







_CALL FOR ENTRIES_







Aar Paar 2004  is a public art project between artists in India and

Pakistan* *



* *



Artists are invited to submit short films , or video works no longer

than  4 minutes.







Fifteen entries will be selected by a Jury of artists and film makers.



The selected works will be projected in open air public spaces as well

as educational institutes in Mumbai and Lahore, between November 2004 to

January 2005.



reminds me of the whole pakistan trip...



of Lahore via Ahmedabad and DV8, a journey over three months, two nations, and endless borders of the heart...





Prelude, February, Delhi.



We've made happy hours start half an hour early in the name of

India-Pakistan friendship. We sprawl, downing pitchers of beer, F, U C and I

(and how i wish my name began with K), in DV8, Regal Building. They're from

Pakistan, students from Lahore here in Delhi for a conference, and we've

known each other for less than a week. But we've bonded over the pleasures

of public drinking in the middle of the afternoon and then going shopping in

Connaught Place.



In what U will later characterise as 'typical sub-continental style', they

invite me to Lahore, with C promising an afternoon of drinking Murree beer.

Relationships have just thawed between the two countries after over two

years of closed borders. Perhaps it is only the reckless optimism of mild

inebriation, but with talk of the forthcoming cricket series, and the

possibilities of Indians getting visas to watch matches, it doesn't seem

that fantastic to think of crossing the border for a drinking session.



XXX



Of course, there is many a slip betwixt the beer mug and the lip. I read,

aghast, as the cricket is nearly called off because of the possibility of a

defeat to Pakistan, which would take a bit of the shine off India, the sort

of ball tampering that reverse swings electoral fortunes. Then the series is

on again.



I meet Mike Marquesee, whose book on sub-continental cricket, 'War Minus the

Shooting', is pretty much a classic study on how jingoistic nationalism has

hi-jacked the sport of one day cricket. Now that the cricket is over, and

trophies and hearts have been won, it might be difficult to remember, but

back then, in February, cricket for war rather than cricket for peace seemed

an equal possibility. History was on the side of cricket for war. India

Pakistan encounters have, previously, turned neutral venues into zones of

war and battle cries. India Pakistan matches have led to riots in India. And

now , the two teams were going to be playing a month and a half of cricket

in the sub-continent, in front of tens of thousands of baying fans, their

passions fuelled by MNC advertisements which are more nationalist than thou,

staking their claim to belong...



It could get really nasty. Especially becuase this is the initiative of a

government which has advertised, over five years, its attempts to make peace

with Pakistan and always ended up making war. The bus was followed by

Kargil, The Agra summit was a fiasco, the Parliament attack, for which an

innocent man was sentenced to death, led to a near war situation for two

years, and the stoppage of all cross-border movement... dreams had been

betrayed too often.



Mike wanted a delegation of people to go for all the matches as 'cricket

lovers for peace'.

This was before we knew that whole cities and stadiums could be just that.



XXX



The lines and lines of people outside the Pakistan embassy, queueing up for

cricket visas is something else altogether.

I wonder if they would stand in lines so long for matches being played in

Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or even in India.

I think not, and am happy with that thought.



History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed for tidal wave...



I con my sister into buying me a ticket for the Lahore test online on her

credit card.



XXX



First One Day International, Karachi/Delhi/Lahore



I watch the last eight overs of the first match in time honoured yuppie

fashion.  on a big screen in DV8, guzzling beer, and cheering loudly

everytime we get a wicket and groaning every time they  hit a boundary. I am

too drunk to be ashamed of the fact that the crowds in Karachi are cheering,

and have been cheering, for both teams. But I do remember being in DV8 a

month ago.



F writes that night -

So you guys have finally avenged Sharjah?! but what a match it was! i

watched it in complete sobriety in our largest auditorium with 200 other

students... but ofcourse would have much preferred my usual leather sofa and

a couple of beers at DV8.



And still later that , long after the fireworks have died down, I catch U

online -

- I don't care how much I believe in Indo-Pak peace and how much I don't

believe in nationalism, but if you'd been in DV8 today, in that final over,

I'm sure we'd have had a fist-fight.

- I'm pretty sure we would have. ;-)



XXX



Second One Day International, Rawalpindi/Ahmedabad.



I feel like having a fist-fight with someone. Anyone.



I've reached Ahmedabad in time for the second ODI and am wandering around

Teen Darwaja, the elegant fifteenth century triple arched gateway at the

heart of the Old City, surrounded by the bustling commerce and terrible

pollution that so characterise the city. Across one of the arches of the

Teen Darwaza is strung a banner that reads, 'Bhartiya Cricket Team Ne

Haardik ShubhKaamna, Teen Darwaja Hindu Muslim Vyapaari Mandal.'



I know that the banner wasn't there for the India Australia series. I know

that in all his post-riot, pre-election speeches, Narendra Modi always

invoked 'Mian Musharraf', as if the head of state of Pakistan was the

biggest problem facing the government of his state. I know that the riot hit

areas of Gujarat are still apt to explode at the least provocation, and

anything can be provocation. I know that a minor riot (one in which a only a

few people die) has started because of a game of gali cricket, in which a

Muslim kid went to recover a ball that had accidentally been hit into the

precincts of a Hindu temple. Give or take a couple of years, and it could

have been Irfan Pathan...



I know that in Gujarat, to be Muslim is to be constantly subjected to the

Tebbitt test, and those banners across the Teen Darwaja, and elsewhere in

the city, are the only guarantees they have for peace.



A frayed, fraught peace, but in Gujarat, 2004, even that is a lot to expect.



I fervently wish that India loses this game. What riles me is that as a

Hindu, I have the freedom to wish that in public.



XXX



Fourth One Day International, Lahore/Junagadh.



The last Nawab of Junagadh used to get his dogs married in elaborate

ceremonies. Came partition, and he wanted to acceede to Pakistan, which was

separated from his kingdom by about five hundred kilometres of Indian

Gujarat. So plans didn't quite work out, and he fled Junagadh for Pakistan,

taking with him two Hindu veterinarians, and so the story goes, leaving his

wife behind. They still show Junagadh, status undefined but separate from

India, in maps printed in Pakistan.



So I'm in Junagadh, and I manage to get into a hotel room in time to watch

the Indian innings. After watching four quick wickets fall, I give up on the

match, disgusted, and go off to check mail. There's a mail from F.



am on my way to the 4th ODI...hope we kick your butt today.. keep a look out

for me on tv!!!



I rush back to the hotel. Jungadh might not have made it to Pakistan, but

sattelite TV ensures that Qadaffi Stadium, Lahore, makes it to my hotel

room. I look for my friends, but it's too late. Though someone else sees

them on TV, and phones U from Delhi, 'Hey I saw F on TV.'



XXX



Fifth One Day International, Lahore/Nowhere.



By conservative estimates, there have been eight thousand Indians in Lahore

for the one day internationals. By all accounts they've been won over by

Lahore. By people going out of their way to make them feel more than at

home. Auto-rickshaws refusing to take money, shopkeepers giving discounts,

perfect strangers inviting them over for dinner.  And yet all the same

stories happened to me four years ago, when things were fairly frosty

between India and Pakistan, when I was part of a student group in Lahore a

week after the Kandahar hijacking. It's not just the hype, there's something

else here... something warm and deeply human that manages to co-exist with

the hatred and hostility which are undoubtedly part of our complex

relationship. But there is the hype, too, and I have never appreciated it so

much. I feel like going around Lahore wearing a T-shirt which says, "I'm an

Indian, hug me", except that I'm sure everyone would.



" It's become the New status symbol in Lahore to have Indian guests. People

have been inviting Indians home off the streets. People have been begging,

borrowing, stealing Indian guests, so that they aren't left out."



But the best story of them all, which I heard from  Yasser Hashmi, Faiz's

grandson, was about Old Anarkali Bazaar, on the night of the final match.

'There must have been about two thousand Indians in the street, and India

had won the match. But nothing untoward happened, and everyone was cheerful,

and the street was packed. My father was with me, and he turned to me and

said, "This is what Lahore used to look like [before Partition]. I never

thought I'd see it like this again in my lifetime."'



Apparently the Indians in Lahore even hired dhol-wallahs and danced, and no

one seemed to mind particularly. Considering that a lot of the Pakistani

audience started rooting for India once it was apparent that they were

winning, I don't see why they would.



I was glad, in a way that I didn't catch the final match. I was on a train

between Gujarat and Delhi, getting regular updates on the match from the

cell-phone of the guy on the berth across. I don't want to know what would

have happened if we lost. I wasn't quite sure I wanted to know what happened

after we won. We explode fireworks everytime we win against Pakistan, and we

did that this time too, so what has changed? Mobs in Baroda surrounded Irfan

Pathan's house to celebrate India's victory, but supposing that Pakistan had

won, and hammered Irfan's bowling in the process, what would the mobs have

done then?



I was glad that I went to sleep on my berth, and the cell phone went out of

range, and I only caught the excitement of the night before second hand in

the next day's newspapers.



XXX



First Test, Multan/Delhi



I get hope from the empty stands in Multan. It should be easy getting a visa

for the Lahore test.



There aren't that many people milling around for cricket visas outside the

Pakistan embassy either. Maybe fifty. But the line of people waiting for

'normal' visas to Pakistanis as long, as patient, and as hopeless looking as

it has ever been. These are people who don't have access to credit cards and

online booking, these are people who need to cross the border and be in

other towns and other times from where/when the cricket is getting played.

For them it is still a long, torturous process, while us cricket visa

seekers are asked to come back the same evening.



Maybe the unprecedented handling of fifteen thousand visas at short notice

by the Pakistan Embassy gives some hope to these people, becuase a precedent

has already been set for visas being cleared, fast. There are people asking

about business visas and being directed to yet another gate. This is

certainly new. And welcome.



What is interesting about the cricket line, when we come back in the

evening, is that lot of the people there are from (Indian) Punjab, and have

already crossed the border once for the Lahore one dayers, and are now

waiting to get back again. my favourite are these two young girls from

Amritsar, chattering away in Punjabi, who had gone on their own to Lahore

the first time, and have now come all the way toDelhi (the visa camp at

Amritsar being operational only for the crazy rush of the ODI's) to get a

visa to go all the way back to Lahore. All the talk of enemy country seems

to just have disappared down the toilet which we once eupemistically

labelled 'Pakistan', after just one visit to Pakistan.  These girls are now

venturing into 'enemy territory' again, this time on an eight day visa.



Unfortunately, now that the hype is largely over, and the cricket crowds are

missing, they aren't allowing people to cross the border by foot as they did

for the ODI's. You have to pick your mode of transport and stick to it. I

choose the bus, which is expensive, and has limited tickets, but gets you to

Lahore in twelve hours, four days a week. On the train, two days a week, you

have to wait eight hours on either side of the border, and that's not an

experience i want to repeat, certianly not in the April heat. However, the

first availaible bus ticket, (which you only get post-visa, which already

mentions your mode of transport) is for the 7th, half way through the Lahore

test match...



XXX



U writes - "and after today's performance, i'm so not wiling to watch pak in

the second match..as a sign of protest..."

I find myself praying once again for an Indian defeat. I'm afraid that if we

win as obscenely at Lahore as we did at Multan, the famed Pakistani

mehman-nawazi might just dry up.... Rahul Dravid obliges by choosing to open

and our top order getting creamed.



Can I get you something from Delhi?

really dont need anything (unless you can bring along DV8 - but i doubt

that's feasible).



XXX



Day Three of the Lahore Test



At 6.00 in the morning the PTDC bus leaves from Delhi. They have ash-trays

in the backs of the seats, something unthinkable on DTC buses, on which it

is illegal to smoke. On the bus are a Hindu couple from somewhere near

Peshawar, an old Sikh lady from Bhopal on the way to somehere near Multan to

mourn a brother's death. There are halves of cross border couples crossing

over. It's a much more complicated pattern of movements and memories  than I

had thought possible.



I seem to be the only one crossing over with a cricket visa. The customs

officers on the Pakistani side laugh at it, tell me the cricket is nearly

over, India's lost five wickets in their second innings, and wave me through

without even opening my bag. I should have sneaked in some alcohol.



Five kilometres past the border, as the sun is setting, we travel to Lahore

on a road running along a tree lined canal, people lolling on its grassy

banks. I had missed all of this last time, coming by train, when the customs

checks enusred that we travelled long after darkness had fallen.

It'a beautiful, poetic way to enter a city, on a road along a tree-lined

canal, as the sun sets on a summer evening. Even the wailing sirens of the

pilot car guiding the bus seem musical.



XXX



I've never felt more comfortable being Indian than in Lahore. That was true

last time, when I came at a time of stress and tension, it was even truer

this time, when I came at time of peace and overt friendship.



After dinner at Cucoo's, the hip rooftop restaurant at  Heera Mandi,

overlooking the beautifully lit skyline of the Old City, dominated by the

Badshahi Mosque and the Fort, F and I saunter into the mosque at nearly ten

o' clock, and at around ten thirty, we come to the Gurudwara.



At ten thirty at night, the sewadar of the gurudwara lets us in, long after

everything has shut down, to see the the gurudwara, and shows us the room

where the Guru Granth Sahib is put to bed, as it were, showed us the places

associated with Guru Arjun, and then shows us Ranjeet Singh's samadhi. He is

mildly amused that an Indian Hindu man and a Pakistani Muslim woman have

come together to see one of Lahore's Sikh gurudwaras. As we are leaving, he

asks us to wait another minute. 'You are from India', he says, 'you know

these things, but I have to show her something.' We are both curious. He

takes us into his room and then gives F a saropa, a robe of honour given to

esteemed visitors, and a  pen, becuase she is a student. The pen is a cheap

ball-point, but what matters are the wishes that go with it.



F will never hesitate about going into a gurudwara again, though she was

slightly scared at first.

Both of us are profoundly moved by the gates that are opened for one in

Lahore by the accident of being born Indian.



XXX



The next morning, F and I entered Qadaffi Stadium without a single ticket

between us.



I had a photocopy email confirmation of my ticket which I waved at the

security guards, and they pointed to some other buliding where I needed to

go to get the actual ticket.  - Buut the match will be over by then, I said.

So they let me in, and F along with me, who didn't have a ghost of a ticket.

On the way inside, we both noted these incredibly hot Pakistani police women

in salwar kameezes and visored caps, totally unlike the burqa clad machine

gun wielding aunties featured in Indian newspapers. Some of them even had

bright red lipstick on. Really hard to miss, but the media somehow did.



By then, India was pretty much out of the game. The Pakistanis needed to

score forty runs to win. But Indian supporters were still dancing in the

half-empty stands. Except that some of the Indians were in fact, Pakistani.

The most enthusiastic of the dancers in our enclosure, waving an Indian

tri-colour and dancing to peppy Punjabi bhangra numbers from that side of

the border (yes, there is!), being played on the stadium PA during the lunch

break, said he was from Lahore when I asked him. I wouldn't have believed

him, except his companions sitting behind us, were calling him a fraud

Hindustani. And a gentleman from Delhi was dancing with him, and this in the

middle of a fairly ignominous Indian defeat.



Perhaps our fraud Indian was doing it for the TV cameras, perhaps not.

Either ways, a Pakistani posing as an Indian at a India-Pakistan match in

Pakistan would have been considered impossible, if not insanely suicidal, a

few years back.



Now - "Students from Government College, Lahore are going around pretending

to be Indians. They get discounts on everything."



XXX



Being an Indian also gets me to meet the Indian cricket team which I don't

think I could ever pull of back in India. They've come to meet the students

at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. I'm hanging around LUMS,

gatecrashing a conference, becuase the match got over a day too early.  It's

obviously been arranged at short notice, because it's officially the fifth

day of play. There'a huge crowd of people pushing and shoving to get into

the auditorium, an hour before the team arrives, and I don't think there is

any possibility of me getting in, as I stand far at the back of the pushing,

shoving crowd. Then F tells them that I'm Indian. And I'm there inside the

packed audi, waiting for my team to arrive, joining in the loud chants of

'Balaji, Balaji'.  In my head i try to imagine IIM Ahmedabad(or even JNU for

that matter) crowds yelling 'Akhtar, Akhtar' if Shoaib ever hoicks Balaji

for an impudent six on an Indian ground. I give up.



I want to personally thank the Indian Cricket Team for not letting security

concerns bother them, and coming to Pakistan in spite of all the tremendous

pressure on them, and playing beautifully. On the field and off it. They

made it possible for me to be here without any agenda except meeting friends

and drinking beer, and visiting a city I love. Like people can do in other

countries...



I fall in love with Rahul Dravid. He's diplomatic, articulate, and tackles

the thorniest of questions with a sincerity and innate good humour that has

the student audience eating out of his hands.

I fall as much in love with Balaji as the Pakistanis have, with his

endearing grin and weirdly Tamil English, and his self-deprecating desire to

be a comedian.

I totally fall in love with Pathan, who handles dumb questions with an

effort, rather than just dismissing them. Someone asks him if Pathans get

girlfriends in India.

- ' What do you think, looking at me?' Claps and hoots from the audience.

A kid asks him a question which seems to wound him. Have you ever considered

playing for Pakistan? I don't know whether the audience cheers the question

or boos it. I can't quite figure out.

-  'I'm proud to be an Indian', he says softly. ' There's no chance of me

playing for Pakistan.'



Someone, somewhere in India, in a different form, at a different time, must

have asked him that question before.

Perhaps it's too much to hope that it will never be asked again.



XXX



Last time I was in Lahore, I was struck by the similarities with

Delhi/India. The image I used was that of a mirror. What I forgot then was

that mirror images mean lateral inversion. Inside outness, right side turned

to left side. This time I paid attention to the differences.



Qadaffi stadium is one of the most beautiful stadiums I've been to. Compared

to the general neglected shitiness of Firoz Shah Kotla, it positively

shines.



(Some) Public Transport Buses are air-conditioned, and for prices not much

higher (and lower in real terms as compared to India) than in Delhi. The

drivers drive safely, the conductors are unfailingly polite, and announce

advance stops gently over the PA rather than banging the side of the bus and

hollering. No one picks fights. People give their seats to older people

without being asked. The women sit in a separate section, unless they're too

many of them. I thought that all Punjabi cities were rough and ready and

full of attitude and braggadocio - apparently not. There is a long story

behind the only time I heard someone (apart from myself) say behen****. But

that's a story to be told later.



(Incidentally, behen****, or BC is the name of a commercially unreleased

song by this popular Paki band called Noori. It is available though on the

Internet, a recording made in a LUMS auditorium for a student crowd.  My

reaction the first time I heard it - what a song!!! the sacred and profane,

the sad and the ironic, love and hate and amused, cynical despair coming

together in such a layer of meanings and possible interpretations ... and

the very daring of just using those words in a public performance... so who

is this guy, and where was this performance????  So yeah, Lahore also has a

booming young, quirky, creative music scene, where artistes and bands write

their own songs, perform them to widespread popular acclaim, and are even

discovering alternative distribution networks.)



Lahore, as compared to Delhi, seems to have an active, intelligent urban

conservation movement going. In Old Anarkali Bazaar, the famed Food Street,

house fronts have been restored by an initiative of the National College of

Art, with the active participation of the residents, and are lit up at night

by discreet moulded lighting. The effect, while strolling up and down the

pedestrian street with its outdoor tables, is indescribably beautiful. All

the monumental buildings, The Government College, Lahore the NCA, The

Badshahi Mosque are all lit up at night with soft, yet directional lighting,

which makes driving through Lahore at night a visual pleasure.



Also, you can actually go up close to the monuments in Lahore, which makes a

huge difference, since Lahore seems remarkably chilled out and non-anal

about security, especially for a town thirty kilometres from a very recently

hostile border, especially as compared to Delhi. In Defence, where I am

piling on at C's apartment, the door is constantly open, and people keep

coming and going till three in the morning. At LUMS, the first time i walk

in, the guard doesn't even stop me to take my name down in a register, he

just 'salaam aleikum's me in. And he doesn't even know I am Indian, which

generally excuses all Lahori lunacy. I enter the Punjab Civil Secretatiat on

the lame (but true) excuse of wanting to look at Anarkali's Tomb. The

security guard offers me some tea.



The houses in posh parts like Defence and Gulberg are most certainly not

Punjabi Baroque the way Def Col and GK are. They are tastefully designed and

graciously spread out, and low rise, with grassy broad pavments along the

roads, not yet inundated by endless tons of cars. (Possibly becuase of

military restrictions on house height, but still) And the Mall is one of the

most beautiful public thoroughfares in the world, with sections of its

central verge eighty feet wide, and covered with flowers.Now,  if only the

auto-rickshaws converted to CNG...



XXX



On my first evening in L ahore, I went to take a leak in a loo in the

basement of the Islamic Summit Minar, a tall monumnetal tower, which marks

the 1974 Organisation Of Islmaic Countries Conference, and marks Pakistan's

turn towards Islamisation after the defeats and dismemberment of '71.



On my second evening, I am taken to Pappu Sain, a man/institution who playes

the dhol every Thursday, by the mazaar of Shah Jamal. Thousands of people

gather on Thursday nights to listen to the complex rhythm patterns he beats

out of the simple dhol for hours on end, with the help of a bit of bhang.

People dance in whirling dervish ecstacy to his rhythms, as the audience

around them, gathered in a circle, sways, entranced, and passes endless

joints of charas forward. This is working class religion, and the whole

connection with the higher beings is mediated through a frenzied bacchanalia

here, and one wonders about Islam making Pakistan a puritan, fundamentalist

state.



XXX



- Indian boy, get your passport. We need to get some beer.



Beer is too bulky for the bootlegger to deliver, so my passport buys us a

crate from a permit room at the back of the Pearl Continental, where the

Indian team was staying. As a barbaad Hindustani kaafir, as i call myself, I

am free to drink myself to hell. Which rule applies to pakistani kaafirs

too, giving them a hell of a lot of economic opprtunity.



Murree Beer really rocks, and should definitely be imported to India very

soon in the future. Bolskaya Vodka, on the other hand, is strictly rot gut,

but effective.



XXX



I do more in Pakistan than just drinking my promised beer, though.

I wander the city, alone and with friends, and discover the little secrets

that make all the difference between home, and away.

Like the best roadside strawberry milkshake in Lahore. Like the best DVD

collection in Hall Road, like Pak Tea House where Faiz and his companions

used to sit back in those days.



I attend a class on 'Faiz and Ghalib, Poetry of Protest', in chaste Urdu, at

the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Possibilties of this happening

in any of the IIM's? I don't think so. Possibility of a course like this

happening as part of the curriculum offered by Delhi University for a

liberal arts degree? I still don't think so. But, of course, the LUMS fee is

insanely expensive, compared to all but our IIM's.



XXX

I feel so at home here that I know that I'm in a foreign country.

I feel more comfortable, more secure, more wanted, more privileged, in

Lahore than I feel in any Indian city, even in Delhi.



It's my second last night in Lahore.

The auto rickshaw driver and I spend half an hour looking for a house

becuase I remember the address but have forgotten the directions. By now

he's discovered that I'mIndian, so doesn't mind the search, and even refuses

to charge extra money. Then, even though I have told him to leave if it's

getting too late, he waits for me past midnight. Then on the way back, as

we're speeding down an empty road, a car emerges as if from nowhere, the

driver swerves to avoid it, and the auto crashes into a road side

construction at high speed, and its front is completely smashed.  In the

back seat, I am almost completely unhurt, even calamities being generous to

Indian vistors in Lahore. But the drivers' face is bleeding profusely from

cuts from the flying glass of the broken windshield. (That's the only time I

hear behen**** in Lahore as he curses at the car's driver.) A guy on a

motorcycle comes and picks up the driver and takes him to a nearby hospital

while I walk there. I'm with him as he gets stitched up, and till I'm sure

he's out of danger. I call on the contact number he's given me. Then, as I'm

about to leave, I try and give him  money to pay for some of his medical

treatment. Even in pain as he is, lying there, getting stitched up, the

first thing he says, refusing the money, is 'Aap mujhe sharminda na karein.'



XXX



On my last day in Lahore, the bruises hurt, and I can understand a bit of

Muhammad Sami's pain as he regulalrly gets hit by the Indian bowlers while

playing his gritty knock.

The cricket  has acquired strange shades of the mirror-world similarities

that Indians see while visiting Pakistan and vice versa. In Lahore, bowler

Irfan Pathan had played a gritty knock of forty nine. In Rawalpindi,

Muhammad Sami, playing a gritty knock, is run out on forty nine, by Irfan

pathan. In Multan, Inzamam was run out without scoring a single run. The

same happened to Rahul Dravid in Lahore.



Mirror world - Like being hit clean over the top for an exhilirating Sehwag

six over the boundary, the geo-strategic Indo-Pakistan gret game has seen

thousands of Indians cross the border in what can only be called in

retrospect, a superb statesmanly stroke. Though many thought that it was too

fanastic an idea to work, a reverse sweep of the Mike Gatting variety.



And now fiteen thousand(?) Indians have visited Pakistan, in Karachi,

Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar, and they have discovered that it's

not such a bad place to be. I wonder, at four in the morning, as U and C

drop me off at Faletti's Hotel to catch my bus back, whether I'm the only

one feeling sad about leaving, sad about saying goodbye...



XXX



Mirror world - lateral inversion. The Indian team may have won the test and

one day series. The Pakistanis won our hearts.



So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a farther shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.



Even if the miracle is sponsored by Samsung, and the forces behind the sea

change are a military dictator, a right wing nationalist government, and

American geo-strategic visions of the future...