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Book of the week|Pundits from Pak
What you find on your travels is likely to mirror what you?re looking for. In the winter of 2003-04, random hordes of Indians went to Pakistan. Most found warmth and happiness because that is what they were looking for and the locals offered overwhelming hospitality.
Pundits from Pakistan
Rahul Bhattacharya
• Price — Rs 275
• Publication — Picador
What you find on your travels is likely to mirror what you’re looking for. In the winter of 2003-04, random hordes of Indians went to Pakistan. Most found warmth and happiness because that is what they were looking for and the locals offered overwhelming hospitality. The visitors also saw their dreams come true when the ‘men in blue’ won two grudge series without cross-border tensions.
For once, both governments got things right by conceptualising a cricket tour where Pakistan offered visas galore to aam aadmi, private Indian citizens travelling purely for pleasure.
The spectacle sparked an awful amount of learned commentary from a motley crew of alcohol-pickled journos, jholawallah peaceniks, toothbrush-moustached hawks and political scientists. Mainstream US media gave the tour front-page coverage. Indian society columnists made the acquaintance of (shock! horror!) Pakistani women who smoked and drank. Pakistanis discovered that ‘Hindus’ lacked the fabled qualms about sharing food. Rahul Bhattacharya is one of the very few who emerged with his sense of balance intact from the full-frontal Indo-Pak bhai-bhai experience. He has a quirky style, well-trained powers of observation and a solid grounding in cricket.
Last but not least, there's the cricket. The match descriptions and appendices are competent and comprehensive. There were many great feats performed during both the ODIs and the tests - India won two hard-fought series by minimum margins. RB describes it all with an interesting sense of perspective and occasional lyricism.
RB has also broken new ground in his analysis of ‘tape-ball’, a street cricket variation specific to Pakistan. A light, tape-doctored ball both swings more and requires more strength to hurl.
Does tape-ball addiction account for the Pakistani fast bowling tradition, RB speculates? And, he also asks, what accounts for the junoon, the madness of individual genius, which has inspired so many chaotically-disorganised Pakistani sides? Perhaps RB will enlighten us about this in his next book — I'll be standing in line to buy it.
