MY fascination with Pakistan is not because I belong to a Partition family (though my wife’s family
does); it is not even because of being a Punjabi. My interest in Pakistan was first aroused when, as
a child, I used to hear stories from my late father, an air force officer, about two Pakistan air force
officers. In undivided India they had been his flight commanders in the Royal Indian Air Force. They and
my father had fought in World War II together, flying Hurricanes and Spitfires over Burma and also after
the war. Both these officers later went on to head the Pakistan Air Force. Though still in my teens, the
Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971 further heightened my interest in Pakistan. In college and university I
studied the history of the freedom movement and the Partition of India. And I was hooked.
My curiosity grew at every twist and turn in Pakistan. The sophistication of Pakistani plays like Dhoop
Kinare and Tanhaiyaan that two generations of Indians still rave about, the excellence of the Pakistani
cricket teams and the brilliance of its squash players contrasted harshly with the trajectory of its political,
economic and religious development. The difference between the democratic journey of India and the
military dictatorships in Pakistan provoked questions as to why the two countries have developed so
differently. The growth of intolerance and radicalization on the one hand and terrorism directed against
India resulting in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Indian civilians on the other lent an ominous
dimension to my questions. I was determined to understand what made Pakistan such a violent and
inhospitable place, on the verge of being declared a terrorist state and the worst nuclear proliferator in
the world. In short, why was Pakistan courting the abyss?
Two couplets by Pakistan’s greatest poets, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, helped me narrow my
quest. While the couplet from Faiz expressed anguish at the circumstances of the birth of Pakistan, Jalib’s
articulated what the rulers of Pakistan had done to the country. Combined, the two couplets expressed the
ongoing tragedy of Pakistan.