Pakistan’s human face

Ms Menon was not the first journalist from The Hindu to report from Pakistan. Before her, there were Nirupama Subramanian and Anita Joshua, and this unbroken line of reportage helped her slip into Islamabad’s social networks with ease. She describes the capital as a sedate city, even charming in parts, and largely untouched by the violence roiling the rest of the country.

It is not easy being a reporter in Pakistan — the media has few freedoms and voices critical of the Army are routinely threatened. The Pakistan Taliban, which wants to implement Sharia law in the country, closely tracks news reports and is quick to impart savage retribution for negative coverage, as Hamid Mir of Geo TV brutally realised in 2014.

When the journalist is from India, one would assume that she would be in constant peril. Not so, Ms Menon reassures us. It is true that she was tailed by two “spies” whom she hilariously dubbed Beard and Chubby, but they were harmless. She would hear stories of how people she had met were questioned by the authorities about the information she had sought.

But these were more irritants than threats, and even her expulsion may have been little more than a publicity stunt. For one, it is very difficult to be a real reporter in Pakistan. Most of the information about things that truly matter is controlled and selectively leaks out, so there is little option but to rely on the official sources. When you do not have access to most parts of the country, as Ms Menon did not due to visa restrictions, it is hard to investigate properly.

Even so, her sheer presence helped Ms Menon understand the ground situation better. Especially revelatory is her account of how Pakistan played down evidence of its complicity in the 26/11 attack, the most chilling atrocity that country has inflicted on us. Her description of the case, which also occupied that country’s courts, displays a regrettable but expected lack of sincerity on the part of the Pakistani administration.

Ms Menon’s understated account reinforces the sense of a failing society. Minorities are discriminated against— Ms Menon writes movingly of the fate of the Ahmadiyyas as well as of the Shias and the Hindus. The Pakistan Taliban is a growing presence, intent on establishing its loathsome social rules. And the Army’s one-track antipathy for India risks damaging the country permanently.

The book is not all grim, though. Ms Menon can be very funny, as when she describes her troubles with Urdu. She repeatedly evokes the common Pakistani’s hospitality, and is often welcomed, rather than shunned, when she reveals that she is Indian. Her accounts of Islamabad parties reminded me of the close-knit but exclusive Delhi circles that outsiders desperately seek to penetrate.

It is the profiles that really lift the book. In a strained media setup, the magazine Criterion Quarterly provides high-quality analysis of contemporary events. Deeply critical of the ideology of terror, the magazine is run by former diplomat S Iftikhar Murshed. Reading about him I could not escape the distinctly Indian impression that if he had been a less important person, he may not have been able to get away with publishing such a magazine.

Ms Menon also visited Abida Parveen at her Islamabad residence, a place replete with homage to and memories of her popularity in India. Ms Parveen spoke of her father, an exponent of the Patiala gharana, and of her abiding admiration for Indian artistes like Pandit Jasraj and Ustad Amir Khan. “For her,” Ms Menon writes, “India and Pakistan are one country.”

But ultimately, you cannot escape the overarching military presence in every aspect of Pakistani politics. In March 2014, Ms Menon profiled “Mama” Qadeer Baloch, the leader of the insurgency in Balochistan, for her newspaper. The grand old man of Balochi resistance had undertaken the historic “long march” from Quetta to Islamabad to protest the disappearance of Balochi youth.

That profile would be the pride of any journalist, but Ms Menon was summoned by the external publicity office. She recounts how the person grilling her had highlighted a quote from Mama Qadeer in which he had denied that he received support from India’s Research & Analysis Wing (RAW). Despite the denial, the mere mention of the agency was a sore point with the powers-that-be, and Ms Menon was asked to leave Pakistan.

Reporting Pakistan is a delightful read. Ms Menon’s fluid narration takes the reader deep inside a country that, despite occupying a lot of mind space in India, is little known. Her book is an earnest attempt at humanising and giving a face to a place that we normally talk about only in reference to conflict. Meena Menon Penguin 384 pages; ~599