M Hanif and a visit to Mauripur

Last month I was at Mauripur’s Masroor Air Force base having lunch with PAF serving and retired officers and warrant officers.  The warrant officers sat quietly listening to their seniors.  I was the only civilian on the round table. One notable retiree asked another if he had read Mohammad Hanif’s book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Random House, India, 2008).  The other got worked up saying it was filthy and he couldn’t believe a retired PAF officer had written this terrible book.  Others who seemed to have heard of it nodded in agreement and we moved on to other matters.

I had been recommended this book as well as Arvind Adiga’s Booker Prize winner, The White Tiger.

Adiga’s criticism of India, like Hanif’s of Pakistan, has been frowned upon by conservatives.
If military academies in Pakistan and India didn’t destroy the sense of humour and irony of their wards, our countries wouldn’t be at war. As Archbishop Robert Runcie said, “People without a sense of humour shouldn’t be put in charge of anything,” and one knows the lethal weapons that generals control.

Both books have been pirated in Pakistan, selling for under Rs200, which suggests that there has been considerable demand for both. I hope to read them before long, and more so after my experience at Mauripur.

In the late 50s I had gone over to a base to see a fly past with the country’s only field marshal saluting the flying machines as they whizzed past. It all seemed very impressive. I had stayed a few times with friend “SayNoToLoans” Naeem Sadiq’s family.  Their apartment is still intact near the officers’ mess, where I stayed one night in considerable luxury.

In ways that I regard as important, the base has not improved. The greenery seems hardly better than what I recall seeing half a century ago.  Had base commanders (the top man pretty much dictates the character of the place) paid attention to this aspect, this largest (by area) of PAF bases would have been green today.  I was, however, pleasantly impressed by the current base commander who seems receptive to conservation ideas and has already done a few smart things.

Finally, a sidelight on the author M Hanif. He now lives in Karachi, still working for the BBC, Urdu Service.  I saw him at the Karachi Press Club at the protest rally held against the killing of about almost 100 Ahmadis in Lahore.  Less than half this number protested the dastardly act and the state’s callousness; this in a city of over 17 million!  Such meagre civil society protests are unfortunately counter-productive — an opinion not largely shared by protesting liberals. These well-meaning but sub-critical efforts expose the paucity of liberals willing to come out against violence.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2010.