Benazir had fans in Shimla
J.N. Sadhu

Benazir with Swaran Singh in Shimla, 1972

The assassination of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi has shocked the people of Shimla. Bhutto made a deep and lasting impression on all those who met her during her three-day visit to Shimla in July, 1972, when she accompanied her father, the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had come for the historic Simla Summit.

Earlier, her fans in Shimla sympathised with her when her father was sent to the gallows and she was put under house arrest for the second time. Later, they again sympathised with her and shared her grief when her brothers Shahnawaz and Iftikhar died in mysterious circumstances in France and Karachi and her mother was virtually banished from Pakistan by the Zia-ul-Haq military regime.

However, her well-wishers in Shimla were happy over her triumphant return to Pakistan and her marriage with Asif Ali Zardari, and sent messages to her, wishing her a happy married life. Many of her fans, particularly the youth, sent her wedding presents. They had more cause to celebrate when Benazir gave birth to a male child a year later. When Benazir accompanied her father to Shimla for the Summit, the whole town turned up to see the Bhuttos when they flew from Chandigarh to Shimla and drove in a motorcade from the Anandale airstrip to the Himachal Pradesh Government guest house, Barnes Court, through The Mall. For three days the whole town was gripped by the Bhutto fever, particularly teen-age girls, who later adopted her hairstyle and dress.

Though coming from a wealthy family and brought up virtually with a silver spoon in her mouth, Benazir preferred to wear handloom dresses during her stay in Shimla. She was mobbed wherever she went, either for sight-seeing or for shopping, and autographs-seekers, despite tight security, flocked around her. She did not disappoint anyone. Whenever she drove through The Mall, people cheered her and Benazir responded generously.

Initially, she avoided meeting the press, while her father was engaged in serious discussions with his Indian counterpart Indira Gandhi and other leaders on the future of Pakistani prisoners of war. Finally, an adventurous female journalist from Delhi succeeded in meeting her and Benazir talked at length about her family, father, future plans and how happy she was to be in Shimla, about which she had heard and read a lot. Bhutto avoided talking politics with the Indian journalist.

Despite her busy schedule, Benazir made it a point to call on her former British teacher, who had taught her in a convent in Karachi. Her teacher, after retirement from the teaching profession, had settled in a suburb of Shimla. The two were happy to meet and the teacher and the taught called with nostalgia their association in Karachi. The teacher gave Mrs Bhutto a pocket-sized Bible and Benazir presented her a bunch of old photographs taken in the Karachi convent.

However, nobody could visualise then that a security lapse would one day be the cause of her death.