Flight, Fragility, and the First Bollywood Snake

My first memories of Pakistan are tangled with flight and childhood fiction. In 1990, as we escaped Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion, our car crossed into Pakistani Baluchistan carrying five adults and three children. After over a month in Iran (the family gardens of Shiraz are a blurry childhood memory), where we were understandably low-key about being Bahá’ís, I remember yelling out the car window the moment we crossed the border, “I’m Bahá’í! I’m Bahá’í!” My family laughed (I was the youngest and always the most impetuous). The story has been retold so often I don’t know where memory ends and performance begins.

But the innocence of that moment gave way quickly. I remember the poverty at the border: raw, overwhelming on both sides of Baluchistan. And then, in Karachi, came my first exposure to India—through a Bollywood film featuring a dancing girl in a Sari transforming into a snake. That, more than any textbook, was my introduction to Hinduism. Try as it might, Pakistan is the ineffable portal to Hindustan, a mirror that reflects what it cannot contain. These memories—flight, fragility, and fantasy—etched into me the idea that culture moves where politics cannot.

Restraint Is the Strategy: Rethinking Peace in South Asia

South Asia is home to nearly 2 billion people. It’s a region of nuclear states, frozen conflicts, and postcolonial trauma. Yet every time a cross-border terrorist attack kills 20 or 30 civilians, it makes global headlines. That’s not just because of the violence—but because the violence is rare. This isn’t an excuse. It’s a signal: South Asia has already learned restraint. The question is whether it can remember why.

The Bug in the Democratic Mind

After 9/11, the U.S. was angry. George W. Bush gave the people what they wanted: a war. Two, actually. Instead of a tactical mission to dismantle a terrorist network, America destabilized entire regions, wasted trillions, and incubated future threats.

This is the paradox of democracy:

• Populations demand retribution.

• Leaders comply.

• Strategy is hijacked by spectacle.

India must adopt a radically different approach. Treat Pakistan the way South Korea treats North Korea: sidestep, outperform, outgrow. Engagement legitimizes provocation. Retaliation restores parity. Indifference signals dominance.

The Nerd and the Bully

Picture a high school student—quiet, brilliant, focused—on the verge of exams. The class bully taunts him a few days before. Two options:

• He fights back and ruins his prep.

• He absorbs the humiliation, aces the exam, and gets into an Ivy League.

That’s India. That’s South Korea. That’s strategy.

India’s Real Ascent

Over the past three decades, India has built something extraordinary:

• A $4 trillion economy (11x Pakistan)

• Global tech and services dominance

• Strategic alignment with the West

• A fast-growing middle class

Meanwhile, Pakistan:

• Is politically fractured

• Has an economy smaller than the market cap of Tata Group

• Remains ideologically incoherent

This isn’t about moral high ground. It’s about trajectory. Retaliating conventionally resets the board. It restores a false parity. That’s the trap. New Delhi must resist it.

The Cultural Trap: Presence > Absence

Banning actors like Fawad Khan feels like discipline. But it feeds Pakistan’s siege narrative. Isolation hardens identity; exposure destabilizes it. Let Pakistani civil society breathe Indian air: Bollywood, memes, markets, music. This isn’t charity. It’s infiltration. It’s soft power, and it works.

Shutting the doors validates the idea that “India hates us.” Flooding the room with Indian culture undermines authoritarian control.

Final Reflection: Architects vs. Hecklers

Strategic restraint isn’t pacifism. It’s power. Because peace isn’t the absence of violence. It’s the refusal to let your adversary dictate your path. India already has one foot in the Ivy League of nations. The real victory isn’t going back to the playground—it’s eventually owning it. Let Pakistan throw stones. India should keep building. Because one day, the scaffolding becomes the skyline. And history always remembers the architect, not the heckler.

There is much historical work on the Indian economy under British rule. The top line summary is indicated in the graph above, while the world grew quickly from 1800 to 1950 (per capita gdp more than tripling), India stayed exactly where it was. Plenty of reasons have been offered, but India’s troubles in this time come down to two reasons:

1. A lack of natural resources necessary for industrial growth.
2. British racial attitudes that deemed Indians unworthy of human investment.

The period I am more interested is the time between 1965 and 1982. The world experienced a surge in output in this time. South Korea went from around the same GDP per capita as India, to 7 times India’s output.

So the question remains of whether India and Pakistan be rid of their adamant attitudes and restart the athletic and cultural exchanges that have been on pause for years. This is a lesson they could take from the historic meeting in the Korean peninsula, which has witnessed much more violence and bloodshed than the Indian subcontinent in the last six decades. Over 12 lakh people are estimated to have been killed in the Korean War, as compared to over a lakh in the Kashmir conflict, the main bone of contention between India and Pakistan.

Will India and Pakistan Learn from the Historic Korea Summit?

My quibble is that the two Koreas are more akin to the two Punjabs or Bengals than they are to Indo-Pak.

India and Pakistan now have very different national traditions where the modern states are built on a rivalry with one another. Pakistan much more so than India but as Kabir says there is far too much blood under the bridge (I’ve butchered that saying) that the best we can hope for is normalised relations.

I don’t know much about Korean history but there is another different; unified Korea is a bit like unified Germany there is one national narrative. But think Anschluss (Austria + Germany) would it be the Catholic Hapsburg or Protestant Prussians (let’s set aside the last example of Anshluss) that would define the hypothetical Germanic state.

Similarly would Indo-Pak reunification be Akhand Bharat or the Mughals resurrected since I imagine no one has the appetite for the Raj.

…….

The group of teens in the video alternates between bluster, attempts at humor and unmistakable fear.
Only
one can be seen wearing a life jacket at the beginning of the video
clips, which start at 8:52 a.m. and end, with a small break between
them, at 9:09, when everyone appears to be wearing them.

As the ferry lists, they joke about “final commemorative pictures” and “defying gravity” by trying to walk on the walls.

The
footage shows the students expressing fears about the ship’s fate as
other students appear to be unaware of the seriousness of the events
unfolding. One student can be heard saying “This is fun” and another
says “This is like Titanic.”

The ferry then starts to list and shake. One of the boys can be heard saying: “I want to get off. We don’t want to die.”

Airing the footage television producer Choi Seung-ho
described it as “by far the most heartbreaking scene I have seen in my
27-year broadcasting career.”

Several times the students are
warned over the loudspeaker to stay where they are, even as the tilting
increases and it becomes less possible for them to flee.

“I’m really scared,” a student says at one point.
“Is it really sinking?” another asks. “Wow, they’re giving us life vests.”
“I’m getting out of here,” one says. “Me too, me too,” says another.
A student says: “We have to survive now.”
“We’re all finished. I have to leave some farewell words before I die,” says another.
“Mom, I love you,” says one.

……
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/south-korea-ferry-disaster-harrowing-footage-emerges-of-students-aboard-sinking-ferry-9311646.html
……

regards

Of course the subterfuge is of no use, we (as parents) would already be dead with worry and frozen with fear… and we would know that the kids are lying…and we will be forever grateful for those last words (texts).

The night-flares lighting up the sinking ship will remain one of the most beautiful/sad scenes that
we will experience (even if vicariously) over our lifetime.

It has of course happened before, for example with the last (Let’s Roll) 9/11 plane.
The people on the ground new in advance (via mobile) that their loved
ones were doomed…and there was nothing that they can do. Even
exchanging seats would not be an option.

The first prize should always be reserved (in our opinion) for the Beslan massacre which took place in North Ossetia (01 September, 2004). The Chechen/Ingush terrorists had cornered 1100 people including 777 children. Some
parents were given permission to leave with their (very small in age)
kids. It was well understood that the older kids would perish (as they
eventually did). There
was a mother with two daughters who had to leave one daughter behind.
The last thing the mother remembers is her (elder) daughter crying and
pleading with her.
….
“Dad, don’t worry. I’ve got a life vest on and we’re huddled together,”
one 18-year-old student, identified only by her last name, Shin, texted
her father, according to MBC News, a Korean news station.

A student texted his older brother as the ship ran into trouble. “The ship ran into something and it’s not moving. They say the coast guard just arrived.”

Brother: “Don’t panic. Just do what you are told to do and then you will be fine”.

….
Another question on which we remain confused and will perhaps always be: Is it heroism or foolish courage to value everybody’s life above yours?

…
One crew member, named as 22-year-old Park Ji-Young, is said
to have lost her life while struggling to make sure passengers on the
upper floors of the ferry wore life jackets and found their way out.

“I repeatedly asked her why she did not first wear a life
jacket. Park just said she would get out of the ship after making sure
that all passengers were out,” a survivor told local media.

“Park pushed shocked passengers toward the exit even when the water was up to her chest.”

The Korea Herald reports that
she joined the ferry company in 2012 to earn money to support her
family. When her body arrived at hospital, the paper reports, her mother
cried: “I can’t believe you left us”
….
Link (1): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/south-korea-ferry-survivors-recall-being-told-to-stay-on-ship-the-ones-who-stayed-are-trapped-9265314.html

Link(2): http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27045924
…
regards

It is an unimaginable loss for the parents whose children were out on a pleasure trip. Hopefully more people will be rescued, however chances are much reduced after a few hours (water temp is only 12C).
….
A
ferry carrying 462 people, mostly high school students on an overnight
trip to a tourist island, sank off South Korea’s southern coast on
Wednesday, leaving more than 280 people missing despite a frantic,
hours-long rescue by dozens of ships and helicopters. At least four
people were confirmed dead and 55 injured.

The high number of
people unaccounted for — likely trapped in the ship or floating in the
ocean — raised fears that the death toll could rise drastically, making
it one of South Korea’s biggest ferry disasters since 1993, when 292
people died.


Local television stations broadcast live
pictures of the ship, Sewol, listing to its side and slowly sinking as
passengers jumped out or were winched up by helicopters. At least 87
vessels and 18 aircraft swarmed around the stricken ship. Rescuers
clambered over its sides, pulling out passengers wearing orange life
jackets. But the ship overturned completely and continued to sink
slowly. Within a few hours only its blue-and-white bow stuck out of the
water.

The students — about half of them boys and half girls— are from Danwon
High School in Ansan city, which is near Seoul, and were on their way to
Jeju island for a four-day trip, according to a relief team set up by
Gyeonggi province, which governs the city.

….

regards