Jamal Mecklai: Welcome to Pakistan

MARKET MANIAC

I was in Pakistan recently for the first time in over 30 years and it was a real eye-opener. While I am still in a debriefing mode, here are some immediate thoughts:

1) Getting a visa to go to Pakistan was quite an adventure. Several people I know knew someone who knew somebody in the Pakistan High Commission and, more fool me, I believed them. As it turned out, I had to use the sada route. This involved sending someone from our Delhi office to get a place in the line""he had to get there at 4 in the morning""and then jumping into the line to take his place when my wife and I flew in from Bombay (around 11 a.m.). Two hours or so of mostly waiting, after which we were interviewed and told to come back the next day. The next day there was another two-hour wait till voila! The visa. But""and this was the shocker""there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of others, who had waited as we had, but were told to "come back after three months". These were poor, uneducated""in some cases, illiterate""people, wanting desperately to visit family. They simply accepted this treatment and returned to their villages making plans to return. Given the situation, I'm pretty certain it's the same story on the other side. Despite this pain, there are hundreds of people lining up each day at the Pakistan High Commission. It is clear that people in India want to""no, need to""go to Pakistan.

2) Pakistan's GDP per capita is close to $800; though richer than India, it's a poor country. It is riddled with corruption and continuous, sometimes violent, political tensions. Yet, its infrastructure""particularly the roads and the airport in Karachi""is excellent, certainly compared to India. Clearly, poverty and endemic corruption are no excuse for poor infrastructure.

3) Pakistani women are beautiful""of course, that's simply a special case of the fundamental truth that all women are beautiful.

4) With the resounding fundamentalist hullabaloo over the past decade, I was a bit edgy about visiting an Islamic country, expecting something of a police state. What I found instead was just a country like any other with people simply living their lives; the only difference with, say, India or France or wherever, is that almost everybody is Muslim. And that has a remarkable impact. Everybody""from socialites to taxi drivers to the man in the street""is extremely gracious [note the word] and hospitable. This came as quite a surprise, since, particularly over the past few years, the media has made quite a terrorist out of the bearded Muslim. There are fundamentalists, to be sure, but, as in most societies, they are on the fringe. They are loud, vocal and, sometimes, violent, but not anywhere close to defining the country. And even as the intelligentsia wrings its elegant hands over the waxing (and waning) influence of the "fundoos", Pakistani society is steadily moving forward. Another wonderful aspect of Pakistan's Muslimness is the sound of the azaan through the day.

5) While the society is quite conservative in its tastes""I didn't see a single brightly printed shirt, for example""it doesn't equate to "no fun", as the cool person in me had believed. One night, for instance, my wife and I were invited to dinner at a friend's house and he had "warned" me that his wife was conservative. Not knowing what to expect, I put on my brightest shirt and my shyest smile. Nasreen, on the other hand, had on a modest (though beautifully embroidered) salwar kameez with a hijab over her head and the twinkliest smile in her eyes. And despite the Islamic strictures on alcohol, I learned that even conservative Muslims love to dance.

6) As in India, education""particularly of women""is the single loudest need, and Pakistan is just beginning to recognise this. It does have something to go on though""Aga Khan University in Karachi is globally unique and certainly better than any educational institution anywhere in the developing world (including India).

7) The newspapers are surprisingly open, diverse and controversial and much more international in outlook than the Indian press. Unsurprisingly, international in the Pakistani context has a strong Islamic focus""other than India and the US, Afghanistan, Iran and Dubai are the three places you hear about most.

8) And, of course, most important of all, is the palpable desire for closer links with India. Just as I tasted the desire in Delhi when waiting for my visa, virtually every Pakistani I spoke to either had some family in India or just keenly wanted to visit""we are all the same, I heard over and over again. The good news is the doors are opening and bridges are being built. I met a charming and highly respected Pakistani businessman who summed it up perfectly when he said, "We need to keep building and strengthening the invisible bridges between our two countries."

I have no doubt that the next two to three years will see dramatic and wonderful changes for both our countries.