Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Fuck Pakistan (and its good, sweet people)


 
Yes yes I know their soldiers are trying to kill ours, their entire nuclear arsenal is made to annihilate us, they send insurgents to spread terrorism and their fast bowlers have been fucking our batsmen for a longer time than I want to admit.

But try as they may, in the golden words of Ramsay Bolton “You can’t kill me, I am a part of you now”.

And the funny thing is ……..that outside India and Pakistan we are not even trying to kill each other, we are actually one. One army friend of mine said that even the Indian and Pakistani army officers get along well while at UN Peacekeeping missions.


I remember eating in a restaurant named Kathmandu in Paris, which served Indian food, which was run by Pakistanis. I heard them speaking in Punjabi, so when the guy came to serve I asked where is he from, he said Islamabad. I asked if they speak Punjabi in Islamabad, he said Punjabi and Urdu are both spoken in Islamabad. He finally gave us 10% discount and refused to take the tip I left. He said “Arey aap aur main to ek hee jagah ke hai”. Indeed.

There is another Pakistani guy near where I stay in Madrid, he is extra warm towards me and my Indian colleagues from office. The last  timeI went to eat at his restaurant he first refused to take money and when we forced him he gave us a discount and then gave three cans of coke free on top of that. He works in a shop run by a Bangladeshi. I would have thought that he would like him more than us because they are both Muslims but he doesn’t, in fact he complains about the Bangladeshi guy ruining his Hindi. .

We are part of them too and they are a part of us. I remember my friend saying “Saggy (another friend of us) ke to Lahore lage hai abhi”. Lahore lagna = having a jolly good time. “Lahore na dekha to kya dekha” is another Punjabi saying that he quoted. They are some more of those in Punjabi. They (Pakistanis) also watch all the Bollywood movies and follow our movie stars and we should (reluctantly) agree their Coke Studio is better than ours. There is so much overlap that if you take out the religion factor there is very little to distinguish us from them.

So I wonder where the blood lust comes from, the will to take lives and kill each other. We eat the same food, we like the same things, we nearly speak the same language, we were enslaved colonized by the same people, we look the same and we both swear by cricket. The Pakistanis I met in the Paris restaurant asked where am I from, having no good answer I said Bangalore (I just randomly say whatever I feel like whenever I am asked this, see this post), when the guy brought me food he said, “arey Kumble aur Dravid wahin se hai na”. I nodded yes without saying what I was thinking. That we , me, Dravind and Kumble actually don’t speak the same language or eat the same food or even look too much alike, in fact I am closer to you than I am to them. Thus, for a second I felt a strange kinship to him. But for a second only, then all the scenes of them invading our country filled my head. So Fuck Pakistan, it’s good, sweet people and everyone who made us and them do that shit to each other.

Why can’t we all make Peshawari Naan and not war?
 P.S - By the way the photo I uploaded is a Indian restaurant in Segovia run by a Pakistani which is named "La Juderia" which means the 'The Jew'.


2019 Update - Another anecdote or rather another meeting with a Pakistani guy. My wife were roaming around in Valencia late at night and we stumbled upon a pizza restaurant owned by a Pakistani, not that we love Pakistani pizza but I like pizza and that was the only place open at that point of time. It is usual in Spain that only the Chinese and Indian/Pakistani people keep their restaurants open till late in the night and on a Sunday.


We got to talking how he moved here with his brother and his sister has moved to London and another brother is in Netherlands (basically his whole family has moved out of Pakistan). We chatted for a while and made fun of Spanish people that how they don't know any English (he added that 'Aap logo kee , that is Indians, Angrezi to Mashallah bahut hee acchi hai) and they cannot eat spicy food. When I was leaving he put extra chilli flakes for us and said they he made a separate sauce for us which is spicier and asked us not to worry he washed everything before making our Margarita Pizza since I said my wife is vegetarian. I had a difficult time imagining why should I feel like we should bomb that guy's country out of existence.


I don't know what is the solution, if there is solution and I think that there is no one who knows for sure. So in the end I will leave you with a quote from the A song of Ice and Fire book series (yes the Game of Thrones ones) said by Prince Doran Martell - "It is an easy thing for the Prince to call the spears, but in the end, the children pay the price."

1 comment:

  1. Unbelievable, aftermath of a whats-app group Fiasco on blog :P

    ReplyDelete

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