View from Across
Yesterday we took out an indian visitor to dinner at Nawab, after having been tipped off by a Hindu friend that they serve the best tawa vegetables there. After an excellent meal, we drove him to saddar for some kulfi. The entire evening was peppered with India-Pakistan comments and subtle comparisons from his recent visit to Lahore and my own visit to Mumbai last year.I told him how much I liked the idea of developing small industries like they had and he loved the way junaid jamshed clothes have sequins within the work; he commented on how different the colour palette at Khaddi was from the FabIndia woven clothes while I talked about how good the double decker buses ads worked there. He marvelled the idea of a place like One potato, Two Potato and fell in love with the masala mayo fries. He wanted Ahmed ka achar to take back home and a cookbook on Pakistani dishes. I distinctly remember thinking that no one can cook vegetables like the Indians can. His shopping list included Hashmi Surma (of which he bought a whole sheaf for his wife)and I thought back to how we had gone all over the place looking for bindis and kurtis. As we drove across Saddar, he casually mentioned how impressed he was with how clean Karachi was and I almost laughed out loud, after recalling how we had gone on and on about how advanced the civic sense of Mumbai was.
All it takes is someone from across the border to love what you have on your side :)
posted by jammie @ 7:33 AM
5 Comments:
Oh I really like khaadi designs, and junaids kurtas
and one potato two potato.
just great!
You're SO right!
I met Shubha Mudgal and her group when she was visiting Karachi. They all fell in love with our buses! And took pictures and showed them to me with such excitement!
And when I told them that the govt. might bring chinese buses and get rid of the current ones with 'truck art' - they got sad and upset!
i will have to agree with u...i had a similar experience at the Pak-india match in khi....the crowd from across the border was fascinated with our patiala shalwars which apparently r not that hip in india( so much for bunty aur babli)....and they expressed similar views about khi being much cleaner and the crowd less rowdy our eyes popped n jaws droppped at that comment...
i also had some in laws visiting from india who just went crazy when they saw our fabric, our prints, and the courtoeus, overly friendly pathan bhais at ashiana...
i guess as u said: "All it takes is someone from across the border to love what you have on your side :)"
its not even that we dont have something or vice versa..its just the curosity for each other
that deserves a post on the metblog.
but seriously, i haven't been appreciating life in karachi (and pakistan, for that matter) lately and desparately need a vacation to come back to my normal self.
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