Alive and Well in Pakistan

To tell you the truth, I am not an avid non-fiction reader, especially of the books on Pakistan, and even more if they are written by foreigners. The titles of such books may seem cliched and the subject matter all concerned about how Pakistan is a bastion of terrorism, and about how the primitive fundamentalism prevails over the whole country. One can clearly see the writers' own paranoia, deeply entrenched by let's say media, hinting conspicuously at how the people of Pakistan pose a very serious potential threat to the West. The authors will too delightfully engage in comparison which usually ends up in bashing the local culture and praising the West. They will how they barely managed to survive in the hideous terrain of Pakistan, and how they now are sitting in their cozy apartments in Texas, relieved after that near-fatal adventure: likening themselves to Rambo in the Afghanistan. Apart from these very ugly aspects of such books, my cynicism also stops me short of reading them, as most of these books are just written to cash on the rising global interest in Pakistan and its neighboring countries, making them as odious as one can imagine.

But the case is different with the book, Alive and Well in Pakistan. How I come to know about this book is a long story, but I will cut it short in order to not digress much, which is my unfortunate habit. On a hot day amid the tensions of the final exam, and desperately waiting for the classes to be over so that I can get back to home, I took the refuge at the university's library. I would seldom find myself at the library. But that day I found myself in the non-fiction category with books about Pakistan. I picked this one and started reading. There was a chapter on the writer's experiences in Multan, a medium sized town in Pakistan. As I have been to Multan many times, I found the description very realistic and down-to-earth. I grabbed this book and took it home along me. Alive and Well in Pakistan is written by an American journalist Ethan Casey about his short stay in Pakistan.

Ethan Casey has used very simple language to explain the various people and different situations in Pakistan. What makes it really interesting to read is the ordinary, less happening sort of events, he has covered, that characterizes the life of ordinary people in Pakistan. It was fascinating to read how he had grown a sort of near-obsession to discover Kashmir out of reading V.S. Naipaul. Well, the first part of the book dealing mainly on his obsession with Naipaul seems a bit boring and also a tad too stuffy. But the second part written in a diary-like style, covering Pakistan flows like a smooth torrent, and is enjoyably readable.

The book tells us of his brief teaching experience at a new university for liberal arts in Lahore, that is jam packed with students from the upper class section of society. He describes a lot of people he found in Lahore; honestly explains his efforts at improving his tennis game at Gymkhana Lahore, where he came to know many politically influential people. Apart from writing about politically and socially influential people, he writes about the people he just met living there. Particularly, he praised his landlady a lot, and I am sure he took a fancy for her. Other notable descriptions are of the Indonesian born woman who used to live in the same Guest House as him, of the spectators he met when he went to watch a cricket match, of a young man demanding his advice to marry the girl he liked.

If you are wishing for something very sensual and extraordinary, please don't read this book, you will be disappointed. But if you want to pass your time catching a glimpse of the really simple Pakistani landscape and Pakistani people in their chores, you got to read this book.