Wide Angle

First you are escorted into the ample living room by a butler, emitting English terms of welcome in the most chaste Punjabi accent, dressed in a tailcoat of such impeccable cut that, given a top hat, he would have qualified for the superior enclosures at the Ascot races.

A burly young man with a large, squarish head, paced up and down the spaces leading to the living room, blurting into his cellular phone one constant message: quot;His legal position is very weak; he is a sacked generalquot;. He introduced himself, one hand still holding his tiny cellphone to his ear, as the man whose sister is married to Nawaz Sharif8217;s eldest son, Hussan Sharif, currently under house arrest in Islamabad. He is a barrister in London and is quiteobviously busy protecting his sister8217;s in-laws on all legal flanks.Hasan Sharif emerges from the long, garishly painted, yellow corridor, clad in a dark suit, contrasting with the light shade of his Prince of Wales shirt. There is nothing in his demeanour, or sartorial detail, that makes him look like a student, a status which is being claimed on his behalf to justify his extended residence in London. quot; My father was so keen to attend the convocation in Decemberquot;, he says almost tearfully, quot;now I don8217;t even know where he is quot;.

Every time I suspended disbelief about Hasan8217;s credentials as a student at quot;the city universityquot;, the butler would materialise from somewhere, bow and make low eyes at me which, I suppose, was his way of asking if I needed more tea.

A Pakistani student in a posh Park Lane apartment served by butlers in tailcoats? quot;You seequot;, Hasan Sharif explains, quot; I went to Acheson College in Lahore where one tends to acquire English tastesquot;.

It is one of the bonuses of the coup in Pakistan thatthe lifestyle of the deposed prime minister8217;s youngest son, its sad incongruities, rank bad taste, are in the public eye now. But this, surely, is only a tiny strand in a huge complex of corruption in Pakistani public life.

To gauge how Pakistanis have responded to the changes in their country, I participated in an interactive programme on Sunrise Radio, the world8217;s largest Asian-owned radio network set up by an enterprising Indian, Avtar Litt. Every Sunday, Avtar has a two-hour phone-in, interactive programme with members of the Asian community. This week he invited Pakistanis in Britain to phone-in their concerns and observations regarding the latest changes in their country. On this programme Avtar invited me to sit in as a guest and film the proceedings for my TV programme, Worldview India. What followed was a revelation:

1 Not a single caller, all Pakistanis resident in Britain, had any sympathy for Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto. Some of the speakers described Gen. Pervez Musharraf as quot;a messiahquot;.Nearly one hundred percent of the callers thought the co-up was quot;welcomequot; to quot;clean up our public lifequot;.

2 Not a single caller referred to Kashmir, Kargil or Bharat. The military takeover was justified on account of internal difficulties Pakistan was facing because of insensitive and greedy political leaders.

3 Foreign affairs India, the US and the West in general were not exercising the callers. Internal imbalance inside Pakistan were.

4 In the past I have been on this programme earlier, an Indian journalist, particularly a Muslim, would have been grilled by the Pakistanis. One observation by me would have been like touching a beehive.

They would have been at me about everything from Babri Masjid to the treatment of minorities.

On this occasion I mentioned the bus journey to Lahore and how the Indian prime minister8217;s trust had been betrayed in Kargil and the response was a mature, reflective silence.

It would, of course, be premature to jump to conclusions and dream up flatteringscenarios, but it would be equally insensitive to miss out on the possible shifts taking place in the Pakistani psyche. Of course, most of the people on the radio show were residents in Britain, but a majority of them also said quite candidly that they had spoken to their families in Pakistan who were, at least for the moment, heaving a sigh of relief.

Peter Hain, Britain8217;s Minister of State for South Asia, summed up the situation quite succinctly. The world8217;s largest democracy had just demonstrated the vigour and durability of its democratic institutions by electing a new government; the contrast on the other side of the border is so stark. Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy of Canada, who will lead the four-member Commonwealth fact-finding mission to Is-lamabad prior to the CHOGM in Durban, was, in a conversation with me, quite as flattering about India8217;s recent general elections. He brought this up as a contrast to the drift in Pakistan.

It is by sheer example that this multilingual, multiethnic,multireligious democracy, held by India8217;s civilisational unity, that is compelling universal admiration even in Pakistan where the people have not missed out on the contrast.

It is this example not sabre-rattling, that will very slowly mellow Pakistan as well and of this mellowing or otherwise we shall see signs at the November SAARC summit in Kathmandu.