PAKISTAN AND ITS COTERIE OF "FRIENDS"

Anybody who knows or follows Pakistan, should be aware by now, that it has its share of friends, but all are of the wrong type....heh heh heh heh heh....nuff said. But one, China, is always spoken of as Pakistan's best friend...time tested friend...all-weather friend...a friend whose "friendship is higher than Mount Everest and deeper than the deepest seas (Marianas Trench?)...an all round exemplar of the the highest friendship ever to be manifested"...blah...blah...blah, and so go the gooey epithets, sweeter than an overdone Punjabi Laddoo in swimming in sugar syrup.But notwithstanding all of this - the China+Pakistan relationship is actually purely a very "bazaari" one, based upon sheer strategic conveniences and compulsions....otherwise, where can we see Chinese peeople, culture, sports, music, literature, films or regular exchanges, or any other social, non-business and non-governmental interaction here in Pakistan? In the time of Mr. Bhutto senior, they at least used to make a few pathetic attempts to facilitate such events, but no longer. There were even a few long standing Chinese shoe shops and restaurants here...all gone. I remember a Chinese student, Nicholas, in our school St.Mary's, in the early 1980s, who spoke better Urdu than me - they have all left, when our society began rediscovering its Islamic "Imaan" during the "jihad". Of course, when I speak of such cultural and people-to-people interactions, I do so with the awareness that our claustrophobic people, with their limited and inferior tastes won't even know let alone care for such ties...our people relish the third rate music and cheap films of their "deadly enemy" and neighbour India - because Pakistan's dominant majority Punjabi and Sindhi populations are from the same Indian culture. And Pashtuns are barely out of the donkey cart era. But no, there are no signs around in Pakistan of the culture their "truest, most trusted friend" China - which in most ways has a superior culture. Like all the other ironies about Pakistan, this too is a glaring paradox nobody cares about.