Thailand reprise

By Kamran Shafi

FIRST the positives. We go on comparing the strides the Thais have made with us stuck in a time warp, without looking at the fact that Thailand has long hence crossed the first hurdle that developing countries confront: that of the psychological barrier that separates an organised people who belong to the developed world from the disorganised people who inhabit the developing world.

Quick example: a Thai electrician or mechanic will wear a tool-belt around his waist with the screwdriver, the pliers, the wire-cutter, the what-have-you, securely fastened in their own housings on the belt — easily reached by the user who then hooks them right back.

Recall the last time that a Wapda lineman came to your house to repair a fault. Whilst Wapda issues each of its linemen with tool-belts none of them wear it. Neither will he deign to wear the safety harness/belt which is also issued to him, and will climb up the pole using the ladder he has just borrowed from you.

Once he is up, hanging on for dear life with one arm and trying to work with his free hand, there is a constant stream of requests: “Please pass me the screwdriver” (which has just fallen from his shirt pocket); “Please pass me the pliers” (which have just fallen from the side-pocket of his shirt).

Second example: Pass by a Thai used spare-parts establishment and you will see neatly stacked shells of cars, trucks, motorcycles; the spare parts will be displayed on shelves by model and year and so on. Just go to Lahore’s famous Bilal Gunj and you will see what I mean.

It is another matter of course that my friend Minoo Marker, who in the year 1974 went crashing through the closed Sariab Road railway crossing in friend Anwar Ali Khan (RIP)’s 1926 Studebaker (driven out without Anwar’s permission who was out of Quetta at the time, of course), Minoo’s attentions being lavished on his fellow lady-passenger rather than on the closed crossing, actually found the exact same headlight which was smashed as a result in Bilal Gunj.

It must also be said in defence of Minoo that, one, he was driving home after an evening at the great Munir Afridi’s (later senator, now sadly deceased too); and two, that the accelerator of that car was in the middle, between the brake and the clutch, rather than on the right in latter-day models. So Minoo pressed the accelerator rather than the brake! None of this is to say, indeed, that there wasn’t a rather pretty girl in the car with him at the time!

Back to Thailand. Prapa tells me there is an economic crisis on the way, things are getting expensive and so on. But you can still buy a very decent Thai meal for four, complete with a sherbet or two(!) for something like 400 baht! Which is 13 US $s! Not street food, but in the Food Hall of Siam Paragon, one of the finest shopping malls in the world with probably the most varied Gourmet Food Market and best bookshop within 5,000 miles of Bangkok.

I spoke about the Novotel Siam Square last week. Well, Siam Paragon is a mere two-minute walk from the hotel, which at US$110 is a steal. Why, the lobby manager, a charming Iranian-British girl actually saw Zainab and I off as we were leaving! I can recommend the Novotel to all comers, any time.

But back to the Thai embassy in Islamabad the Beautiful, the one high hurdle you must cross before you can set foot in what I call the Gentle Kingdom. What criteria does it apply when it issues visas, say, to the hundreds of pheri-wallahs that one sees aboard every flight to Bangkok and back and most of whom cannot read nor write so you have to fill their arrival cards for them? Pheri-wallahs are young men who go to Thailand and come back laden with cheap toys and trinkets which they then sell to retailers across the country. Indeed, Islamabad the Beautiful has several such outlets.

These young men are usually uncouth yahoos who make a nuisance of themselves from the time they board the flight to the time they get off. They start by making a noise about the weight of their baggage, to demanding they be allowed to take more than is permitted on board the aircraft. Invariably their cabin baggage is made up of radio-controlled cars, the latest craze in the Fatherland. Note please, that all of their merchandise is contained in white garbage bags, I kid you not.

The soothing manner of the Thai crew and several glasses of sherbet (but only several) help calm them down until the aircraft doors open in Islamabad the Beautiful and they revert to their loutish ways: making remarks about the physical attributes of the foreign women on the flight — they would never about Pakistani women for fear of being thrashed soundly(!) — and then guffawing loudly and generally being a bloody pain, pushing and shoving their way out of the aircraft.

So then, while it asked for a letter from my editor for little rhyme and less reason before it issued my visa, what criteria does the Thai embassy apply in the louts’ case who seem to get theirs in very short order indeed: one of them told me it took him just one day. My daughter and I got our passports back on the day of our flight, putting us to very great distress.

Importantly, when I tried to telephone the embassy someone picked up and disconnected the line eight times, finally answering my call on the ninth try. THIS is how Pakistanis are treated by the Embassy of Thailand in Pakistan. Will someone do something about it, please? Our Foreign Office? The Thai foreign ministry? Someone? Anyone?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are what they would be when Naek, Khosa, Awan & Company are the new supreme leaders of the PPP: the dismissed-by-a-COAS judges languish where they do; the ‘extra-legally’ elected Commando with the highest SQ in the world is sharpening his Commando knife for another assault on democracy; and the Kings Party that was thrashed merely six months ago is preparing for another stint in untrammelled power, Mushahid ‘Mandela’ Hussain leading.

Good; go for it, lads. The PPP deserves you; you deserve the PPP.

As for Nawaz Sharif, there is only one piece of advice one can give him. Leave the coalition before it is too late and let the PPP make an unholy alliance with the PML-Q (“Qatil League” according to Asif Zardari, two days after Benazir’s horrific death) and the MQM and Musharraf. Then just sit back and watch the fireworks! Most of the country’s people will be laughing with you.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

There is no getting away

By Kamran Shafi

THAILAND is one of the most pleasurable places in the whole wide world to visit — now before any of you start sniggering, I am here with my twelve-year-old daughter, so there — everybody smiles at you, the food is great, the shopping affordable, and even the weather is cooler than that in the Land of the Pure at this time of year.

If you are travelling Thai Airlines, the feeling that you are in friendly and caring hands washes over you the moment you step on to the airplane. The attendants are exceedingly polite and helpful and nobody growls at you as they most times do on PIA, the exception being a good PIA flight now and again.

Our hotel in Siam Square, the Novotel, a 4-star establishment (it is at least 7-star when compared to most of the kitsch hostelries in the Fatherland almost all of which are actually shadi-ghars or marriage halls now), is a great hotel with excellent services. It is located right by the best eating places, cinemas, and spanking new shopping malls and department stores.

The comfortable and squeaky clean Sky-Train is a one-minute walk away and once on it you have the freedom of the city of Bangkok where one of the most helpful and hospitable and delightful people that I know, Prapa Smutkojon, lives. What a pleasure it is being with him and discussing the world with him.

But by God was it difficult to get a tourist visa to visit this great and gentle Kingdom this time around! I have been here tens of times (the first time in 1979), and there were at least three previous visas, one as recent as February this year, in the passport presented to the embassy, but what a palaver it was to get one. It was so difficult and embarrassing and demeaning that had it not been for Zainab whose holiday this was, I would have withdrawn my passport and not come at all.

And what was the problem after completing ALL the formalities such as attaching bank statements and air tickets (as if we might have swum to Thailand otherwise!), attaching a letter introducing myself AND naming Prapa as my contact in Bangkok complete with his address and telephone numbers? That since I had written in the column ‘Profession’ the word ‘Columnist’, there was not a letter from my editor saying that I was, indeed, a columnist with his newspaper!

I thought the Thai embassy had a press section that actually scanned the Pakistani papers! And who might have known that there was a columnist called Kamran Shafi in the English press in Pakistan who had been writing for not one or two or three years, but for 25! I mean, puhlease!

It was not as if I had asked the Thai embassy to pay my airfare, or my hotel expenses, that my editor’s certificate was necessary. I mean all I was doing was applying for a tourist visa so I could bring my little daughter to this beautiful country for a short holiday. That is all.

But wait. When I told Prapa about my tribulations at the hands of the Thai embassy in Islamabad, he told me of his friend’s at the hands of our embassy in Bangkok. Apparently some typically typical bureaucrat, and by golly do we have more than our fair share of them, had asked for a ‘FAXED’ copy of something or other document.

When Prapa and his friend went with an ‘EMAILED’ copy of the document, the Pakistani bureaucrat rejected it, insisting on a ‘FAX’. So, there it is, tit for bloody tat! One bureaucrat outdoing another. But, seriously, Thailand is a far better run, better organised country than the Citadel of Islam in every single way. Why, even the electricity doesn’t go off, not for a single minute, ever.

Its visa procedures, therefore, need to be made more efficient too. The Thai embassy in Islamabad is the only embassy that has asked me for a letter from my editor. And I travel rather a lot.Elsewhere now and there are reports that the Americans are ‘winning’ in Iraq. One million or so killed and maimed-for-life Iraqis; fully 15 per cent of the country’s population refugees; several trillion $s down the tube; Iraq’s infrastructure in ruins; the Turks bombing the daylights out of the Kurds; and America with many more enemies than before the assault on Iraq is winning, is it?

If it is, then why not an all-out assault on Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas? Indeed, why not nuke ’em out of existence? It will cost less and if there are no more Afghans and Pakistani tribals there will not be any problem, what?

Meanwhile, news from home is, as usual, bad and bad news follows you wherever you go, even in beautiful Thailand. The latest shenanigans of Rehman Malik aka The One Man Wrecking Crew and the evidently not-very-bright Yousuf Raza Gilani have delivered another kick in the nation’s teeth, sending it reeling another time.

I am no friend of a rampant ISI, let me say straight away, but to place it under an unelected person, particularly one whose name is Rehman Malik who has already distinguished himself not once, not twice, but three times putting both his feet in the government’s collective mouth?

Instead of trying to cut the ISI to size in several other ways, one being posting out the incumbent directors general, all of them, and reducing the ranks of their successors, these nincompoops go and issue a silly order as if Musharraf and his handmaidens who still hold positions of great authority would let them get away with it.

NOW does Zardari understand just WHY it was/is imperative that the Commando be got rid off at the earliest opportunity? NOW does he understand that the judges should have been restored to the pre-Nov 3 position months ago? NOW does he understand that Naek, Khosa, Awan and Company were/are exactly the wrong people to listen to?

I am still plumping for democracy; I am still hopeful that we will transform from an army-dominated dictatorship to a true democracy; I am still hopeful that the great coalition will stay and prosper. But will Asif Zardari do the right thing, even now? If he doesn’t it is his neck first on the block — he should know that much.

PS. More good news: Thailand beat Pakistan 29-0 in the Under-15 Asian School Football Championships in Bangkok this last Saturday. However, we are a nuclear power and have not one, but several bums.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk