139 Monday Musings - Two taxi drivers

139 Monday Musings - Two taxi drivers

Meeting a different kind of people, the ones about whom you have only heard of so far but never really met, can be a very revealing experience. Genetic biologists say that there is 99.7% similarity between any two human beings, across the world, which means that there is only .3% difference between any two samples of homo sapiens - a number that surely makes a mockery of the hundreds of pretexts on which human beings have managed to distinguish themselves from each other. India can be a very overwhelming place if we go by the number of ways in which identities are sliced and chopped, each making us thinner and more mutually exclusive sub groups, based on the usual suspects - religion, castes, sub castes so on and so forth. Over a period of time popular stereotypes of each of these sub groups gets built and entrenched. There are many circumstances during which these stereotypes get challenged. 

On an alien land, which is too different from us, somebody less different suddenly appears more familiar and acceptable. This power and relevance of this truism became more evident to me on a recent trip to Dubai, I had the chance to be driven around the city, at two different times by two taxi drivers - all Pakistanis, who appeared more familiar, acceptable and accepting to me in Dubai than the thought of Pakistan and Pakistanis has been while I have been in India. This was probably my first experience to test my feelings towards the people of a country whose existence for us has been like sibling rivalry - born of the same wombs, but grown to hate each other where while one can hate the other but never really deny his existence. Though I have always been acutely aware of how divisive language can be, I realized through these interactions its ability to forge bonds. As we struck a conversation with Ghulam and Bilal, the two taxi drivers in question, so much got revealed - some that I enjoyed and some that I did not.

Ghulam, a pasthun from Karachi was sturdy, fair complexioned and more on the face of the two. He had clear and firm views about everything, particularly the status of cricket in the subcontinent. According to him Sachin should have retired after the world cup the way Imran Khan did, has become too old and is probably only interested in his 100th ton, things that we obviously contested. Ghulam remained firm in his views about Sachin as a spent force, nowhere near divine as we make it out here in India.

Bilal, the younger of the two, a punjabi from Gujranwala, a town near Lahore, was more expressive. We talked on many things and in no particular order I recount a few of those to you. He thought Imran khan had a chance in the politics of Pakistan for simple and elegant reason that people had already experimented with Nawaz Sharif and Benazeer Bhutto, without much result and hence simple rule of fairness and the incumbency effect combined merited that we try the third one out. He also thought that we are making too much fuss about the match fixing in Pakistan cricket - of the 300 balls in an innings even if the bowler favored his own people in 10 of them, then we should not really create too much hue and cry about it. He thought that Shoab Akhtar is mentally deranged and Sachin definitely a spent force.

Bilals view about Bollywood were an interesting academic read, for it definitely proves that the best way to conquer Pakistanis is definitely not another war, but our films. He thought Hritik was hardworking, Ranbeer just about ok, Shahid a good actor, Salman a mindless hunk, Aamir as intelligent but Shahrukh a very well read and educated actor. He had seen practically all the recent movies of these stars and could make his views about them basis the roles these stars had essayed in them. Bilal spoke fluent Punjabi and said that while Urdu may be the national language of Pakistan, folks spoke their local language mostly i.e Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun et al, something which so true about Hindi and all the other languages in various states in India - so different and yet so similar!!!

Bilal was endearing in the way he came across - warm, affectionate, expressive, knew his mind and knew how to express it. He surely had his quirks and stereotypes, yet he was forthcoming in the expression of his likes and dislikes in a very honest and upright way. I kind of liked him - and if he is how an average Pakistani is, then two things are clear - one, we are not much different than them, and two I am going to like their company, for they may be anything else, but they surely are not boring.

Guru