Islamabad Diary, December 2004
“It can’t be wrong, when it feels so right.”

Swarna Rajagopalan

In the recording booth of an Islamabad FM radio station, I am choosing songs from the 1970s and 1980s for the host to play, and I pick Debbie Boone’s hit, “You light up my life.” Ten days later, as I sit to write this article for Indogram.com, it occurs to me that that was essentially the refrain in almost every conversation I had going to Pakistan, in Pakistan and on the way back. “It can’t be wrong, when it feels so right.”

This trip has been a year in the planning. And mention of it has elicited curiosity(“Wow! How exciting!”) and disbelief (“Why on earth?!”), never disinterest. While each part of India remains primarily preoccupied with its adjacent neighbor, Pakistan occupies an important place in the Indian imagination. And vice versa.

Do you love me?
En route Islamabad, a pattern is already beginning to emerge in my conversations with Pakistanis on this trip. First, we talk about how much we have in common. This can take a long time because, really, we do have a lot in common. Then we speculate in the most diplomatic terms we can muster about the factors that keep us separated. This is conducted in tones of great regret, always, and ends quickly before anyone is forced to try and pin blame. Pakistanis want to know what Indians think of them. And are Indians hopeful of the thaw in this relationship? The anxiety about the answers is not veiled. Then we move on to other topics or lapse into silence and the five decade history of confrontation sits between us like a large elephant.

An abbreviated version of this exchange goes thus:

“Are you from India? India mein kahaan?”
Yes. Bombay and Chennai.
“Have you liked Islamabad?”
Yes, very much. It is very pretty.
“And Pakistan.”
Very much. What is not to like?
“And Pakistanis?”
I cannot contain my smile at this eager question that I encounter repeatedly.
My reply: “Even more.”

I know I have made my interlocutor’s day!

Model Town
What does Islamabad look like? Pakistan’s first capital city was Karachi while plans were drawn up and construction started on a new city adjacent to Rawalpindi.

The planning of the city is much like that of Chandigarh’s, from what I read. Laid out in grid-like sectors, the city is built at the feet of the Margallah hills so that wherever you are, you can see them. (Or wherever I went, I could see them.) Local residents tell me that the closer you live to the hills, the higher your social status or political reach.

Every sector has a market area. In this, Islamabad reminds me of Delhi. There are two large shopping areas, plus the Sunday market and the bazaars in Rawalpindi. Like Delhi, though, this is really a bureaucratic town.

Door of an old Haveli

The view from Daman-e-koh
There are trees everywhere—or rather, over the 30-35 years of the city’s existence, the trees have now grown to a fullness. When you look down on Islamabad from Daman-e-koh, a terrace garden observation point in the hills, for the most part you just see the trees. For someone going from overcrowded, dirty, messy, rubble-filled Chennai (for all the Chennai loyalists reading this, just ask anyone in T-Nagar what the roads have been like here this last year), it is heaven. There is no one on the streets, hardly any traffic. What a soothing relief!

It is also a very sleepy town. My younger friends are particularly emphatic about this. Delhi, to them, looks hip and happening compared to Islamabad. Others, I meet tell me, to eat well, I must really go to Lahore. Yes, yes, even vegetarians can find something there. Islamabad has the quiet of a South Asian mofussil town with the conveniences of a city. It does not have the street culture of great old cities and it does not have the frenzied pace of great new cities.

Is Islamabad clean, a niece asked me? Yes, it is. I think to find the usual multi-layer grime and dirt of the average South Asian city, you would have to go to Rawalpindi, which I did not have time to do. Islamabad is Pakistan’s show-case, assiduously dusted off for foreigners on a regular basis, in the same way as Delhi’s Chanakyapuri and adjacent areas are.

Most Favored Nation
There is some political nonsense about Pakistan not granting ‘Most Favoured Nation’ (MFN) status to India. Nonsense it is, because in every Pakistani store I go to, India is the most favored nation. Prices drop when we don’t ask, drop further when my companion asks, and drop still further when I add my voice to the list. More importantly, merchandise is displayed with patience and with the pride reserved for one showing family photographs to a visiting relative.

MFN status means that I am going to get the Pakistani salwar kameezes I wanted, after all. It is almost one o’ clock in the afternoon, but the store-keeper says, “You are from India. You are returning Monday? I will give it to you today after 9.” And yes, he will also quickly shrink the fabric for me as well. With that assurance, I shop with abandon choosing two lengths that to me—and I hope to others in Madras and Delhi—will not look Indian at all. He finishes the job early and when I go to collect the outfits, gifts me a wall-hanging with his store’s name and contact information on it. And also, he points out, “The Mohenjo-daro bull.” I am delighted with the thought of having the contact information for an Islamabad cloth store and tailor in Madras. That’s my kind of regional cooperation!

We adjourn to a gift store where a quick look around the handicrafts and gifts reveals that none of them are easy to pack. We linger in the music section of the store. My MFN status is reinforced here too, as sales clerks eagerly peel the cellophane off compact discs so I might listen to them and choose. When I don’t choose any, befuddled, I feel a little guilty. But we return later and buy several so that guilt is finally alleviated.

The heritage of Pakistanis
Within minutes of the planned Pakistan capital city, our forest-lined road winds to where Islamabad’s Lok Virsa museum nestles in a well-chosen clearing and framed artfully by hills and trees. This museum of folk arts is a celebration of life itself, with all its material fullness and ethereal aspirations.

Entrance to the Lok Virsa Museum

In the yard are placed modes of transport, decorated in the local style, including the very distinctively painted trucks of Pakistan. Other structures in the compound replicate the simple mud houses of the North Indian (North South Asian?) plains, not an unusual fashion for such complexes in the region. In fact, the act of choosing to replicate everyday structures and styles in museums is a political choice to move away from the imposing structures in which colonial rulers housed their exotic war spoils and state gifts.

Many of the structures in the compound appear not to house anything in particular, or it could be that it was a particularly sleepy morning we were there. However, all of the low mud structures were studded with these exquisite doors that must have belonged to havelis all over Pakistan. If this quality of artistry is still available in Pakistan, it is to be hoped it is celebrated and receives patronage. The doors presage what lies ahead.

The first hall holds a few exhibition panels on the history of Pakistan through time. These are conceived beautifully, juxtaposing replicas of the best-known remains of earlier periods (such as the Mohenjo-daro dancing girl and head priest) with recreations of present day material life—hut facades, pots and pans, textiles. Mohenjo-daro and Gandhara yield to a depiction of Pakistan as the cross-roads of Asia.

A few steps and my senses completely take over my brain. A short passage of intense color and texture follows as I look at dhurries and shawls from all over Pakistan. Then, baskets follow. The more stark the landscape, the brighter the colors of material life.

What makes Lok Virsa an exceptional museum—by any standards, but certainly by regional ones—is the attention to detail. The curators have recreated scenes from everyday life in every part of Pakistan, and these are rich enough that you can stand there and make up your own story about the figures who stand or work or talk within these panels. You enter and exit, as briefly or at length, the lives of real people. Even as ethnographic museums go, this is a museum that showcases a peopled heritage, not one made of baskets and bricks and bronze caskets in isolation of their producers and users.

The same attention is visible in the sections that depict the “Pakistan as cross-roads” idea. In the corridor where the Central Asian section is kept, the ceiling is divided into panels, and each panel is painted in a different regional style. Likewise, the wall tile varies in certain places, juxtaposing different kinds of paneling.

I cannot really begin to describe the richness of this museum because honestly, the almost two hours I was there were hardly enough to comprehend it fully. If you have a chance to be in Islamabad, this is a must-see experience. Do not miss it.

Do you have room in your bags for a little more love?
Between all the paper acquired at the conference, books bought and books gifted to me, I need not have shopped for anything else to make my luggage incredibly heavy. My bags pass without comment in Islamabad, but in Lahore, the PIA agent tells me, “You have excess baggage but I am letting you go.” I say to him ruefully, “Thank you! What to do? There are so many beautiful things here and people have given me so many presents…”

What is harder to express in the laminate and aluminium setting of an airport is that what he is weighing is not the bulk of what you are taking back with you.

I am leaving Islamabad with a full heart. I have been shown and have received so much warmth and love that it enfolds me like soft layers of cotton-wool and silk. I cannot pack it and he cannot weigh it but it travels with me, and always will.

Swarna Rajagopalan is a political analyst, writer and Bombayite. This is mostly extracted from a longer travelogue.

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