Through a looking glass
Rubinder Gill

Alive and Well in Pakistan
by Ethan Casey. Penguin Books. Pages 269. Rs 275

Veteran reporter Ethan Casey’s Alive and Well in Pakistan is a delightfully penetrating read. Casey brings forth a world of warmth and contradiction, which is truly well and alive. Kashmir, India and Pakistan are an antithesis of the stylised and artificial suburban America, from which the writer wants to be as far away as possible. An obsession with V.S. Naipaul at twenty sowed the seeds of the journey and the subsequent book. This obsession eventually led Casey to Pakistan, but brought him to India and Kashmir first. The second part of the book deals with Pakistan while the first is about Kashmir.

Casey’s insights as a journalist make the book brilliant. He simply reports what he sees and lets us make what we want of it. The story on the other side makes interesting reading, like through a looking glass. Casey presents both sides without passing judgement. It is a solid recount of the atmosphere in the two countries before the big thaw engineered by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who achieved what more than liberal leaders, obliged to protect their domestic flanks, could not.

The book starts with Casey landing in Kashmir in early 1994 and finally ends with him leaving Pakistan in 2004, a little after the two countries were on the firm road to better relations. Casey, who taught a journalism course in Lahore, at the end of his stay sees off the Samjhota Express onto its momentous journey along with three of his students. The end of the book probably signals the beginning for the two nations who had been at each other’s throats for better part of their independent existence.      

Casey brilliantly depicts the events and scenario in Kashmir in the 90s. Kashmir today is vastly different with its political optimism. Indeed, both countries have travelled a far way from the nervous 90s. In Pakistan, Casey presents the picture without dehumanising the country, its people, their beliefs and views.

He underlines the warmth, intellect and complexities of the people of the two countries without trying to cover too much ground and simplifying the situation. He takes care not to use phrases which are propagated by reporters on deadline, approved by editors with limited space to spare and desired by readers wanting understanding without effort, were the opposite of poetic, leeching the complexity and subtlety out of the situation. There is more to say and see beyond the bare facts and this is what Casey does, seeing the human side to the whole situation.

He deftly weaves the dissonant perspectives and poisonous vocabularies partisans bring to matters of dispute in the subcontinent along with the simple voices and ideas and emotions of the common people.

The lure of literary history and Naipaul may have enticed Casey to Kashmir but he ends up recording a slice of a period Kashmir’s political history, with precision of description. Casey starts on Naipaul’s trail but soon branches out on his own, gaining a perspective different from Naipaul’s. Beginning as a literary tourist, the writer ends as a mature practitioner, drawing observations through a cross section of people on the street, students, journalists, lawyers and politicians. Casey explores life in Kashmir and, more importantly, Pakistan and presents a slice of life with passion and action, with almost a Native’s perspective.

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