DAY 6 WEDNED\SDAY 110707

PESHAWAR

0800hrs:
Yet another miserable morning riddled with problems. Despite repeated attempts to get the hotel management to either fix the fan in my room or give me an alternative room, I have now spent two nights in a small and stuffy room with little ventilation, underneath a fan that cannot really be described as a fan and on top of that, it has now dawned on me that electricity is in extremely short supply. My troubles have piled up so much in the past few days that issues such as the non-availability of electricity have almost passed me by. For example, while sauntering through Saddar yesterday, there were many power outages, which I can only now begin to digest in the cold (hot rather) light of day.
Yes, my laptop has also been infected by the ‘Peshawar’ virus. Can my situation get any worse? My day is no doubt going to be consumed and/or overshadowed by this dilemma.
I decide that the first thing I must do is to get that letter for the President printed and sent to Aiwan-e-Sadr. In these past two years and three months, I have monitored his interaction with India as closely as possible. What particularly caught my attention amongst the various sound bites emanating from him was the phrase ‘Thinking out of the box’ on Kashmir. I think this summed up the desperate need for fresh thinking in Pakistan. However, in my opinion, amongst the public and most disturbingly within the ‘think-tank arena, creative thought has been sparse. For example, editorials in some Pakistani newspapers that I read on Kashmir today are almost identical to editorials that I read eighteen years ago. I hope I can meet the president when I get to Islamabad next week. I humbly believe, all my thinking has definitely been ‘out of the box’.
1100hrs:
At last, I finally manage to get that letter sent via registered post, having tip-toed through those viruses. It is now time for me to make the short cycle ride from the GPO (General Post Office) to Nawai-e-Waqt’s (A National Urdu daily) offices to meet it’s Peshawar bureau chief Mr.Riaz Khan, who doubles up as the Peshawar Press Club’s President.
As I enter the paper’s offices I notice a Nestle water filter in the foyer. As I’m spending up to 100 rupees a day on bottled water, I may as well fill up half my bottle here and save myself 12.5 rupees. (Every little helps)
Mr. Riaz Khan listens to my story very patiently before embarking on a fiery outburst of his own. The gist of his argument was that, as India and Pakistan are enemies, they need a mediator to resolve their issues. He believed that the ‘West’ holds the necessary negotiating tools to give Pakistan what they wanted. In turn, I opined that the track record of the ‘West’ resolving conflicts was pretty dubious. On the contrary, one should look inwards, make oneself more productive and constructive in relation to solving the problems faced by the common Pakistani, concentrate on improving one’s image with the rest of the world and develop a constituency in India, which works to improve the general perception that Indians have of Pakistanis.
I suspect my ideas didn’t resonate with him. He finished off the conversation by relating a discussion he had in the U.S.A with some American politicians. When they propagated the virtues of democratic government, he immediately rebuffed them by pointing out that that the American government was solely and always responsible for installing dictators in Pakistan!
I felt his comment vindicated my ideas more than his.
1700hrs:
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the midst of ‘PC experts’ seeking options on killing those viruses on my laptop and USB. As the clock struck five, it was time to get back to Medialinks to see how well my T-shirts have been printed.
Not very well, unsurprisingly. However, I have to make do and come to terms with the practical realities of this country. Which, at times I have admittedly struggled to do.
2000hrs:
I spend some time in talking to ‘Peshawarites’ about life in general. Most conversations tend to veer towards the topic of civic amenities such as water, electricity, public baths etc. Someone suggests that up until some years ago, water was so plentiful in the city that it was available even at a hundred feet above the ground. Now, one has to dig down as far as eight hundred feet to find that oh so essential ingredient in our lives.
The theory on the current electricity problems ravaging the city is that some ‘criminal elements’ have destroyed a major electricity-generating base near Kohat (approx. 40 km south of Peshawar). The supply has apparently been diverted from elsewhere, hence the intermittency. For those that don’t have a generator, conducting business has been virtually impossible these past few days. In a strange way, experiencing first hand the problems that the normal, average Pakistani endures every day makes my own problems quite remote in comparison. Thus, I’ve never felt tempted to play the ‘populist’ card and get people behind me because they have so many problems of their own that they must attend to.
My message, which I will probably re-iterate time and time again, is for the power structures in both India and Pakistan to divert resources away from security and concentrate on providing solace to the common man. Give him/her the opportunity to educate themselves, to develop their thoughts and conscience in whichever way they see fit, provide them health resources that minimize their disruption of normal life and perhaps most importantly, promote and facilitate economic opportunity in any way possible. The need to spend on security and defence will recede proportionately.
2300hrs:
I’m tired, with that small, stuffy room on the third floor of the ‘Paradise’ Hotel beckoning, it is high time that I retire from this world, albeit and alas, just till the morning.