More Salt Than Pepper

by Karan Thapar

  Alongside other sections I was part of the panel judging the best documentary award. There were two entries that literally took my breath away. The first was from the Philippines on the people’s power movement that replaced Estrada with Macapagal-Arroyo earlier this year. The second was from Korea and focussed on the first meeting between divided families after a painful partition of fifty years.

  The panel sat in pin-drop silence as both were played. Not a person coughed. No, I don’t even think anyone moved or crossed their legs. It was hypnotic.

  The first ended amidst spontaneous applause. We felt part of the triumph the documentary sought to portray. The second left everyone in tears. I sobbed uncontrollably. But then I often do. Even Bollywood films leave me crying. This time, however, so was everyone else.

  Consequently it became a tough choice to pick the winner. After all, which is the more difficult emotion to evoke: joy as you watch someone else’s triumph or pain and sorrow as you identify with their suffering?

  Try and answer that question. It’s not easy.

  You don’t realize how good coffee can taste until someone serves you a decent brew or – and this may sound odd but it’s the truth – until you visit Starbucks.

  Until two years ago the very name would put me off. I can’t say why but it sounded cheap and nasty. I’ve walked past countless Starbucks shops in London with my nose superciliously in the air. I’d smile when others praised the place as if to suggest I knew better. Yet all along I was wrong and horribly so.

  Then, in 1999, I had a Starbucks coffee. It was an ordinary Cafe Mocha but it was mind-blowing. No, that’s not an exaggeration because at first sip it blew my prejudices away. I asked for a second cup and only the thought I might seem greedy stopped me asking for a third. But I regretted it.

  So last weekend I had plenty of Starbucks, if I can put it like that. Every time my concentration seemed to wander Jonathan would suggest another and I was disinclined to refuse. Ultimately, it was the size of my bladder that stopped me having more. But I’m working on that.

  I now hope that one of the rich entrepreneurial barons who occasionally read this column will take a hint and introduce India to Starbucks. They’ve given us Dominos, McDonalds, Pizza Express and Baskin Robbins. Surely Starbucks has to be next?

  24 September 2001

  Paradise Regained

  I clearly remember my first visit to Sri Lanka. It was the winter of 1986, Jayawardane was in his second term as president and Premadasa was prime minister. The Tamil struggle was in its infancy.

  As the incoming plane flew low over the lush fields of Katanayake, glinting in the bright sunshine, I could tell why this island was once called Serendip. From the sky, its beauty is dazzling: acres and acres of brilliant emerald green edged by the deep azure blue of the sea.

  The first thing that strikes you is the people. In the 1980s they always seemed to smile. More than that, they laughed easily and, usually, they laughed a lot. Consequently, they were easy to approach, willing to chat and went out of their way to help. Rukman Senanayake, a nephew of the former prime minister, took me to Kandy and Nuwara Eliya, cracking jokes about the Sri Lankan accent all the way.

  ‘Pay close attention to our pronunciation,’ he teased. ‘We call it the Temple of the Tooth!’ He was talking about the famous temple with the Buddha’s tooth, except his pronunciation made the word rhyme with foot. It was our first meeting but it felt as if we’d known each other for years.

  The next two decades did a lot to wipe the smile off Sri Lankan faces. After successive onslaughts of LTTE terrorism, their jovial innocence evaporated. Instead, a look of tired resignation and a philosophical nodding of the head appeared to take its place.

  For me the most telling experience was with a taxi driver in 1997. We were driving to the Hilton, hours after the hotel had been bombed by the LTTE. I was one of a hundred-odd victims. With bandages on my head, hands and shin, I was returning to pick up any bags.

  The drive began in companionable silence. Although he couldn’t bring himself to speak, the driver kept sucking his cheeks and shaking his head in evident sympathy. But as the devastated hotel came into view his restraint vanished.

  ‘What a terrific hotel this used to be.’ He spoke softly, with evident pain. His eyes were wet. ‘I remember all the happy people I have brought here. Will they ever come back?’

  ‘Of course they will.’ I tried to be reassuring although I was about to leave, lucky to have survived the LTTE. ‘The future will be bright.’

  ‘The future?’ I’ve never heard the word spoken with so much disbelief. He said no more yet he had said it all. The silence that followed was pregnant with despair and hopelessness.

  Sri Lanka, I suddenly realized, had lost its future. It only seemed to have a past. It had become an island of memories. With each passing year they became both exaggerated and faded. But because that’s all that was left they were clung to tenaciously.

  I may be exaggerating a little, but that future has returned to the horizon with the defeat of the LTTE. Whilst their struggle for Tamil rights was undoubtedly fair and just, the Tigers had become an insuperable obstacle to the success of their own cause. They may have seen themselves as freedom fighters but millions perceived them as murderers and terrorists. They had transformed into their own enemies.

  The challenge now is to win over the hearts and minds of the Tamil people. That sounds like the most trite of cliches but the truth often is. The test is not the political system President Rajapaksa will offer the north – though that’s important enough – but the smaller, more important steps he must take to weave the Tamil minority into the mainstream: real representation in the civil and defence services, effective implementation of Tamil as a national language at the level of police stations and small government offices and the eradication of the attitude that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala country.

  Perhaps my taxi driver is smiling today. Maybe he can see or, at least, sense a future. But it has still to be realized. Otherwise, like a mirage, it could vanish once again.

  29 April 2009

  The Story the President Told Me

  Occasionally – but only occasionally – I find out things that are almost stranger than fiction. It happened recently in the most unlikely of circumstances from the most incredible of sources. But for all that the story is true or, at least, I have no reason to doubt it. And since I wasn’t told to keep my mouth shut – in fact, I half believe my informant would want me to blab – I’ll share it with you. So sit tight and read on.

  Last weekend in Colombo, as I stood staring at a rather nice oil painting on the garden-facing wall of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s office, she came up from behind and whispered, almost conspiratorially, into my ear.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  I said I did. It was impossible not to. Nor was I lying.

  ‘Do you want to know the story behind this painting?’

  I stared at her perplexed. What on earth could she mean? Presidents hardly ever presage their remarks with such broad hints of an impending scoop. Yet I had the distinct feeling I was about to learn something special. She obviously recognized my gleeful smile as a way of saying yes because without waiting for a verbal reply she started to tell me the story.

  ‘This painting has hung in this house for over 200 years. It’s an old Dutch portrait, a scene from south Sri Lanka. That’s the temple at Habantota (or, at least, that’s what it sounded like to my Punjabi ears).’

  ‘How very beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s not the point of my story,’ Mrs K said. She sounded a little irritated at my interruption. ‘It’s been here from the days when this was the governor-general’s house and it’s stayed here after independence. About ten years ago it went missing and no one knew what happened to it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘So how did it reappear?’

  I half thought this was going to be one of those mystery stories. You know the sort I mean – pain
tings that disappear in the dead of night and reappear on a bright dawn six years later. A sort of act of the occult. I was wrong.

  ‘Well,’ the Sri Lankan president continued, ‘one day the gentleman who is at present our high commissioner in Delhi was leafing through a Christie’s catalogue. At the time he was vice chancellor at the university here in Colombo. He’s fond of looking at auction catalogues. But as he flipped through this one he saw a picture of the painting. It was up for sale.’

  ‘You mean you bought it back?’

  ‘Good heavens, certainly not,’ said Mrs K. ‘Let me finish the story before you jump to your conclusions. Don’t treat this like one of your interviews!’

  I smiled bashfully and promised to keep my peace.

  ‘Mr Bandaranayake, that’s his name, informed me and I alerted our high commission in London. In turn they contacted Christies. And do you know what Christies told them? They said the painting had been brought for sale by a Sri Lankan gentleman. We asked for his name and it turned out to be President Premadasa’s son-in- law.’

  Premadasa – in case you’re not up to speed with Sri Lankan political history – was president of the island from 1988 to 1993 when he was assassinated by the LTTE. He belongs to the opposition United National Party. Mrs K clearly hates him. She even believes he is guilty of ordering her husband’s assassination.

  ‘You mean he stole it?’ I could hardly bring myself to ask the question. Sons-in-law of presidents don’t steal government property from their father-in-law’s official residence. I thought that was a golden rule thieves always honour.

  ‘What else?’ And when we questioned him he actually had the cheek to claim he’d bought the painting on Portobello Road for 25,000 pounds.

  Now, Portobello Road is where you go to buy antique second hand silver. I’ve bought quite a lot there myself. On Saturdays the pavements are crowded with dealers up from the country for the day. You can pick up a few bargains but I doubt if an old Dutch master would be one of them.

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s the truth,’ said the president of Sri Lanka. ‘You see, sometimes we politicians can tell a story that takes the wind out of your journalistic sails!’

  17 September 2001

  A Farewell to Afghanistan

  The Kabul I remember was very different. In fact, Afghanistan itself was another country. Zahir Shah was on the throne, the hippies had yet to discover the place and Chicken Street was only famous for its crude abattoirs. The birds were kept in open street- facing cages. Once a purchase was concluded their necks were wrung in front of you and the blood drained into the open juis (gutters) that lined the street. It was heady stuff but quite different to the drug trade that took over in later years.

  Kabul was a happy city. Innocent and carefree but also a little deceptive. Behind the huge walls that surrounded each house, ensuring privacy and protection, lived middle classes at ease with western sophistication. Women smoked, painted their nails and dressed in the best of French fashion although they might wear a burkha if they ventured outdoors. Men wore suits and kissed the hands of the ladies they met. French was spoken as frequently as English. And it certainly wasn’t uncommon to see people drinking.

  My father was the Indian ambassador and we lived on the same street as the American embassy. Except at the time it did not exist. Our house faced a vast open expanse of barren land but visible at the far end was the Pakistan ambassador’s residence. Alongside was the home of Marshall Shah Wali, the king’s uncle. Such geography might seem unlikely today but in the middle ’60s it was unremarkable. It also led to close and lasting friendships. General Yousuf, the Pakistan ambassador, and Daddy were colleagues from the days of the old British Indian army. Not surprisingly, the families became firm friends. Abidah, their younger daughter, taught me tennis. She would wear a white pleated skirt for our lessons and beat me without consideration for my age. I was nine.

  My parents got to know the royal family quite well. Abidah and my sisters became better friends with the princes. There were five of them. When, towards the end of our stay, Daddy had a heart attack, he was surprised by how often the younger princes would visit. ‘I had no idea they were so fond of me,’ he once remarked. My sisters found it difficult to suppress their laughter. Mummy had to bell the cat.

  The king also had two daughters. The younger one, Mariam, was a part-time nurse at Kabul Hospital. Fate was to be less kind to her. In keeping with Afghan custom she married her first cousin, only to find that in 1973 her father-in-law would overthrow her father. For the last thirty years she has lived torn between her parents in exile in Rome and her husband in London (after his father, Daud, was himself deposed in 1978). Her life is a sad illustration of the greater tragedy that has befallen her country.

  Of course, in 1964 all of this lay in the future. At the time Afghanistan’s politics seemed stable, even placid. My world was my school. Known by its acronym AISK, the American School was a microcosm of Kabul’s international society. There were Polish, German, Yugoslav, Iraqi, Turkish, French, Italian, Pakistani and even a few Japanese kids but Afghan children dominated. We hankered after peanut butter sandwiches and rich chocolate brownies. We read Superman and Archie comics. We played American football. ‘Aw shucks’ and ‘Gee whizz’ were our favourite phrases. My accent drove my mother up the wall. ‘No darling,’ she would correct me when I got home. ‘It’s aluminium’. I can still recall her lips mouthing each syllable as she pronounced the word meticulously. But aloominum sounded more catchy to my ears and I was determined to be American.

  It was a time of innocent pleasures. The Spinzar Hotel, run by an elderly Swiss couple, was famed for its patisserie. The éclairs were everyone’s favourite. However, the younger set preferred the Khyber Restaurant at Pashtoonistan Square. It was large, self-service and cafeteria style but it was the happening place in town. Lemon meringue pie and baclava were the most popular choice. It never occurred to us that they symbolized two aspects of Afghanistan’s life that would soon be crushed.

  On summer weekends we would head for Kargah, a deep- water ice-blue lake a half-hour drive from Kabul. Here there was always laughter and music. Carefree bathers would lounge in their swimsuits. Bikinis were the rage, suntanning was de rigueur. Only the enthusiastic would actually swim.

  The nearby hill resort of Paghman was the rival attraction. Rich Afghans maintained holiday villas on its fruit tree lined slopes. On Friday evenings, as the weekly holiday came to a close, sipping green tea whilst a cool mountain breeze blew past was a popular pastime. Nothing much happened nor was it expected to. The pace of life was restful and easy, uneventful but full of fun.

  Not all of Afghanistan was equally developed. When we visited Bamiyan the hotel was a poorly converted former stable. For heating we were given the braziers on which the kebabs had been cooked for dinner. My mother’s request for a hot water bottle confounded the staff. After much explanation they gave her an old whisky bottle filled with scalding water. But the Buddhas were a joy to behold. As the morning mist lifted after breakfast you could see them standing like strong silent sentinels. To a nine-year-old they appeared incredibly big.

  I remember our holiday in Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif. The high point of the journey was the Russian-built Salang pass. It cut through the Hindu Kush mountains and what emerged on the other side was a different world. Here the water was so cold you could chill your beer in minutes in the cascading mountain streams. When we set off from Kunduz for Mazar the road soon petered out into dry deciduous savannah. We drove for hours across this landscape with nothing but telegraph poles to guide us. It was jeep country but Daddy’s ambassadorial Cadillac covered it uncomplainingly.

  I wasn’t impressed by Ghazni, Kandahar or Herat. No doubt they are old cities, rich with heritage and culture, but they are also hot, dusty, fly-ridden places and the air smells of sweat. It’s fitting that the Taliban should have made Kandahar their spiritual capital.

  Looking bac
k on my memories one strange fact stands out. I can’t recall being scared in Afghanistan. This emotion, so common in childhood, is strangely missing. I was often scolded, and even occasionally slapped. Consequently, I can remember times of anger, pain, remorse, tears and a lot of sulking. But I don’t recall fear. I can’t explain its absence. It’s simply a fact.

  If at all there was fear in our lives it came from the constant anticipation of earthquakes. Kabul, a valley surrounded by the Hindu Kush range, is prone to them. Everyone seemed to have his or her favourite earthquake story and none of us tired of hearing it. But in the ’60s, at least, earthquakes only frightened us. They caused little damage.

  When I returned to Kabul as an adult in the 1980s, just after the Soviet invasion and thereafter repeatedly till the Taliban took over, I found that this fear had been forgotten. A more genuine one had taken its place. The constant rumble of guns. Now people were truly scared.

  I don’t know when the Afghanistan I have described passed into history. Perhaps in ’73 when Zahir Shah was deposed or in ’78 when Daud, his brother-in-law, was removed? But there were remnants that lingered on through the communist presidencies of Tarakki, Amin and Karmal. Even Najibullah’s Kabul retained recognizable echoes of the past. Maybe it was with the mujahideen that it finally ended?

  After the Taliban, of course, only memories survive.

  1 October 2001

  Bombay vs. Mumbai

  I clearly remember my excitement as I stepped off the plane. It was my first visit to Bombay, as the city was then called. I was sixteen and thought of it as India’s most cosmopolitan and glamorous. The trip was a present from Daddy after finishing my Senior Cambridge exams. It was also the first holiday on my own. Consequently I felt grown-up and liberated.