BBC has started a program before the October 10 Elections called "Pakistan – an Evening "; the local TV has improved tremendously over the last 7 years. The level and maturity of debate and the issues being discussed is very impressive. Educational institutions are sprouting like mad.

On August 20, at the official launch [at Pearl Continental Hotel , Lahore and later in Karachi and also in Islamabad ] of the "Daily Times" newspaper [ owners – Najam Sethi , Salman Taseer –ex PPP , co-owner of PACE superstore in Lahore ] , Arundhati Roy [ the God of small Things ] , and Sen from Indian Express made speeches about Peace and nuclear disarmament in South Asian . Roy made a pertinent observation – " It is difficult to educate 400 million people than it is to make the Atomic Bomb…." – South Asian leaders please note this comment. The rest of the time, Pakistani newspaper journalists could not find any intelligent questions to ask Ms. Roy.

The Taxi wallahs in Islamabad say they are surviving; they curse the radicals here who keep killing innocent civilians. Mushtaq Khan Mohmand is in his thirties from the Mohmand tribal agency, is a taxi driver – he says he got a C1 [1300 c.c.] Diesel Engine] fitted into his 1988 Toyota Taxi; he has four brothers and they all live together in an extended family with his parents house in Rawalpindi’s suburb of Westridge – which is basically an army officers’ colony on the main Grand Trunk road to Peshawar and Lahore. He has gone to his village in the tribal Mohmand agency right on the border with Afghanistan, to start building a small house and excavate a tube-well, which he says, hits the water at a depth of 500 feet. He says the water is so good that when one drinks it one digests the food in one hour and feels hungry again. He has the colour and features of a Greek youth.

IMF, World Bank economists say that the economy in Pakistan is in recession. Yes unemployment is high. So is inflation. The per capita figures are greatly misleading because about two-thirds of the economy is not even documented.

In a way it is good that the westerners have left this area of south Asia - it saves the pristine northern areas from the scourge of tourists. There will be less pollution. This country is one of the best-kept secrets for the western tourists. There is wireless broadband Internet, Cable Internet for the nerdy Internetters.

The people here are a resilient lot having been used to looting and plunder for the last 2000 years. The Greeks, the Persians, the Chinese, the Central Asians, The Mongols, The British, all had their day. As our school history teacher used to say about this. "the camels were groaning under the booty…."

In the Gulf area in the 1991 Gulf war, we joked about " Bin Ladin the camels a bit too much old boy….." as the Scud missiles would start arriving in the night around Riyadh [ about 44 were fired at Riyadh] a little after 10 p.m. This time there is a certain darkness in every ones mind, the intelligentsia, the man on the street are all thinking, after Iraq, it is Iran, and then its going to be us, the land of the pure that will be ‘rogered’ to glory or rather….. Could it be that easy and simple.. I wonder.

Bulliah , pee sharab ty khaa kabab ,

Os thuggan dey thugg noo thug …..

This is an ancient land; the peasant here, according to John Berger, has survived hundreds of years of oppression. Just as the Polynesian seafarers had about a hundred different names for sea waves that indicated their origin, this part of south Asia is also full of a lot of wisdom.

"The moving finger writes and having written,

It runs out of ink………"

Electronic ink never dries up.. More later

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