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TRAVELOGUE
Pleasantly Surprised, In Islamabad
By YOGINDER SIKAND
ISLAMABAD IS surely
the most well-organised, picturesque and endearing city in all of
South Asia. Few Indians would, however, know this, or, if they did,
would admit it. After all, the Indian media never highlights anything
positive about Pakistan, because for it only ‘bad’ news about the
country appears to be considered ‘newsworthy’. That realization hit me
as a rude shock the moment I stepped out of the plane and entered
Islamabad's plush International Airport, easily far more efficient,
modern and better maintained than any of its counterparts in India.
And right through my week-long stay in the city, I could not help
comparing Islamabad favourably with every other South Asian city that
I have visited.
That week in Islamabad
consisted essentially of a long string of pleasant surprises, for I
had expected Islamabad to be everything that the Indian media so
uncharitably and erroneously depicts Pakistan as. The immigration
counter was staffed by a smart young woman, whose endearing
cheerfulness was a refreshing contrast to the grave, somber and
unwelcoming looks that one is generally met with at immigration
counters across the world that make visitors to a new country feel
instantly unwelcome. Outside the airport, Nadeem, a driver sent to
pick me up, gave me a warm handshake, and when, shortly after, he
learnt that my grandfather was born in his own native Abbotabad, a
town not far from the Afghan frontier, he pressed on me a hearty,
sweaty hug.
“Bhai Sahib, This is
the land of your ancestors!” Nadeem beamed. He insisted that I travel
with him to Abbotabad and stay with him in his home and try and search
for the house where my grandfather had lived before the Partition. I
seriously wished I could, I told him, but the vexing visa regime
between India and Pakistan strictly forbids citizens of both countries
from stepping out of the cities for which they have been granted
permission to visit.
No sooner has the
visitor stepped off the plane in Islamabad and drives into the city
than he is forced to realize that whatever the Indian media says about
Pakistan and its people is basically bogus.
 No,
Pakistan is not a ‘fundamentalist’ country, teetering on the verge of
a take-over by ‘religious radicals’. No, Pakistan is not a
‘prison-house of Muslim women’, who are allegedly forced into wearing
tent-like burkhas. No, Pakistan is not a ‘failed state’ that
produces nothing. Flowing beards and skull-caps are conspicuous by
their rarity in Islamabad as are burkhas. Women drive and shop
and work in government and private offices. Most basic consumer items
are produced within the country. And, as in India, despite government
ineptitude and convoluted elite politics, the country survives and is
not on the verge of total collapse, contrary to what Indians are made
to believe.
The Islamabad Club,
where the organizers of the conference I had come to attend had put me
up, seems like a relic from colonial times, only that it was built
much after the British departed. It is the favourite haunt of
Islamabad-based bureaucrats, army officers and landlords, heavily
subsidized for their benefit, as in the case of similarly stuffy elite
watering holes in India. I would have actually preferred to stay in
much more austere surroundings—after all our conference was all about
democracy and social justice in South Asia—but I comforted myself with
the thought that a bit of luxury for just a few days would not do me
major harm.
 Islamabad,
in some senses, is like Chandigarh: a new, planned, modern city, set
up on decidedly Western lines. It was founded in the 1960s when the
capital of Pakistan was shifted from Karachi. It straddles the
foothills of the Margalla range, which leads on to
Kashmir
in the north-east and the North-West Frontier Province, near
Afghanistan, in the west. It is divided into numerous zones, each
having its own markets, schools and other such institutions. The
city’s roads are fantastically smooth and wide and enclosed by broad
grassy banks. Carefully manicured gardens and thickly wooded parks
stretch for miles. Cobbled paths lead up to trekking trails in the
nearby mountains and enormous bungalows enclosed in private gardens
line the streets. The air is remarkably clean and crisp, traffic jams
are rare, and one can reach one end of the city from the other within
just half an hour.
Since Islamabad is a
new city, it boasts no historical monuments worth seeing. Yet, the
city has its own share of attractions for the visitor. The massive
Pakistan National Monument atop a hill that commands a majestic view
of Islamabad is an architectural marvel, and so is the massive Faisal
Mosque, one of the largest mosques in Asia, so expansive that it
accommodates an entire university in its basement. Equally bold and
striking are the Pakistan National Assembly, the President’s House,
the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the Supreme Court and a host of
other swank buildings housing government offices that line the main
Constitution Avenue.
The Rawal lake on the outskirts of the town extends far into the
distance till it meets the horizon, and, like the rest of Islamabad,
it is clean to the point of appearing thoroughly sanitized, at least
to the Indian eye. On the banks of the lake are a number of welcoming
restaurants, and a small, whitewashed temple, a testimony to the times
when, before the Partition, there was a sizeable Hindu community in
the area. Nestled on the other side of the lake is the glamorous
Daman-e Koh or ‘The Lap of the Mountains’, a thickly forested valley,
and the best way to spend an evening in Islamabad is to drive up there
for the icy breeze, a dinner of biryani and an assortment of kababs, a
live band singing melancholic Hindi film numbers from the 1960s and a
panoramic view of the city below.
The suave and gracious
Kamran Lashari, head of the Capital Development Authority (CDA), the
body entrusted with developing Islamabad, was our host one night,
having invited us to a sumptuous dinner at the fabulous Lake View
Park, a large expanse of green located on the banks of a placid lake
at the edge of town. I tell him, and I hope he knows I am serious,
that Islamabad is the best city I have ever seen in South Asia and
remark on how well-managed it is. And so do the other Indians who have
also been invited that evening, fellow participants in the conference.
Lashari tells us, and
he has every right to beam with pride at this, that till he took over
his present position some four years ago, the annual budget of the CDA
was a billion rupees, with some eight-tenths of this being funded by
the Government and the remainder being self-generated. Today, the
CDA's budget has increased twenty-five fold, and the ratios for
government and self-generated funds have been reversed. He talks
excitedly of his future plans, of the many new architects, designers
and construction companies that have come up in Pakistan in recent
years and about how he hopes to work with some of them for projects
that he has conceived. For fellow Punjabis like myself,
Islamabad
feels just like home. Most of the city’s inhabitants, as indeed most
Pakistanis, are Punjabis, and are essentially no different from fellow
Punjabis across the border in India, although, I personally feel,
perhaps a shade better looking! And, as an employee of the Indian High
Commission in Pakistan, who travelled in the same plane as myself on
my return, also a fellow Punjabi, quite rightly remarked, “If you want
to learn etiquette, learn it from the Islamabadis”.
But then, Islamabad is
as representative or otherwise of Pakistan as posh South Delhi or any
other similar elite-inhabited part of any other Indian city is of
India as a whole. Islamabad is decidedly elitist, the poor, mainly
people who work in the homes of the rich and for the CDA, being
confined to a few anonymous working class localities in the city or
commuting everyday from neighbouring Rawalpindi. As Zaman Khan, a
burly, friendly worker in a posh restaurant quipped when we got down
to talking about mounting inflation and rapidly expanding
socio-economic inequalities in India and Pakistan, “There’s hardly any
difference between our two countries. I am sure you have fancy
quarters in cities in India that are reserved just for the rich, just
as Islamabad has. What difference does it make if the houses and
localities of the rich are so beautiful and comfortable? The rich here
and in
India as
well must be equally indifferent to poor people like us.”
True enough, and yet
another thing of the many things that India and Pakistan have in
common. But notwithstanding Zaman Khan’s astute observation,
Islamabad, I must admit, excited me in a special way, and I long to
return soon.
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