This is a review of the book – The Nine lives of Pakistan – Review written and edited by Dr. Anoop Prathapan and first published on the 17th of July 2022.
how I ended up with an audiobook
I picked up the habit of making phone calls while driving, right from my days in the UAE where talking handsfree with a headset on, is permitted by law. Calls that had to be made and/or returned were done while driving. I continued doing that even after getting back to India in 2013. There were many people on my list with whom I talked for almost the entire duration of my journeys. Nine years down the boulevard, in 2022, I see that such phone calls have faded out – either people were (surprisingly) not interested to talk to me for that long, or they were busy or had other inclinations, or I myself did not find a couple of those talkers not logically worthy enough to continue making long conversations with.
The other way I keep myself entertained while driving is by listening to music that I played on the car audio system. I used to have a paid iTunes account for which I pay Rs. 1,250/- on the 25th of November every year to maintain the subscription. I had a decent assemblage of songs there, either those that I bought straight on iTunes or those that I converted and uploaded from my earlier CD collection. But off-late, that also got so boring with no new hummable tunes being produced in any film industry.
Gopi Sundar shifted base to Telugu which dried up the kind of Malayalam commercial film music that I enjoyed. Maestros like M. Jayachandran or Ouseppachan rarely make music for films these days. Legends like Johnson master and Raveendran master are dead already. No Malayalam filmmaker seems to be interested in Vidyasagar or Ilaiyaraja anymore. I just cannot stand the easily forgettable loud noise(s) that Sushin Shyam, Jakes Bejoy, Shaan Rahman, Vishnu Vijay, and the likes generated in the name of Malayalam film music, these days. I honestly did not like the music of the recent, immensely popular “hridayam” movie as well, even one bit.
With regards Tamil, the industry suffered a great loss of good music when it was Anirudh all around. No more of the legendary A.R. Rahman and no more of the chic perfectionist Harris Jayaraj or at least the peppy Yuvan Shankar Raja. The Anirudh-generated unreasonable commotion was insufferable. So conclusively, listening to music became monotonous and boring with nothing new to hear.
My new workplace is 24 km away from my condo. I drive to and fro, every working day – a strenuous ritual that takes at least 50-60 minutes (one way) in Indian conditions.
So naturally, my crusades became so dull that I tried to attempt something new. The editor of my first published book of translation, Dr. Anjali S, presently a post-graduate student in Biochemistry at AIIMS, had shared the constructive aspects of listening to audiobooks in one of her blog articles long back. You can read that post here. https://bookswithanjali.com/5-benefits-of-audiobooks/
So, I decided to subscribe to Amazon Audible® and start listening to an audiobook. Searching a lot for my favourite topics on the Partition of India and the history of post-independence Pakistan, I was advised (by Audible) of the 2020 book, “The Nine lives of Pakistan” by ace Irish journalist Declan Walsh who was a senior correspondent in “The Guardian” and “The New York Times” and who lived for almost a decade in the politically turbid country before being ousted by the infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 2013 stating “undesirable activities”. The audiobook is narrated by Roger Clark.
It was a remarkable experience listening to history that I always wanted to listen to and know more about, as my car sped through the unruliest traffic on the planet.
The Book Review
The book by Declan Walsh is a wonderful amalgamation of facts and figures accurately melded with his crisp narrative style. All through the text, he seemed fascinated by the country. The history of pre-independence Pakistan and what led to the evolution of the Muslim country from “the flanks of” British India, to the swearing-in of ace cricketer Imran Khan as the civilian Premier is recounted in brief through the stories of nine individuals in Pakistan, the tenth being the author himself crocheting all these together. The story of Mohammed Ali Jinnah the flamboyant lawyer who, despite being Muslim and advocating for a Muslim state, lived a life British style, drank whiskey, played golf and married a western woman is elaborately narrated.
The tale of Asma Jahangir the Human Rights Activist known as the “cast-iron idealist” in Pakistan and her association with Benazir Bhutto, how she warned Ms. Bhutto of a trap being laid for her assassination are all, details that could be listened to only with profound emotional trauma. In no other book could I read about the assassination of Ms. Benazir Bhutto in such detail. Asma Jahangir was truly an iron lady who had the nerve to call the Pakistani Dictator Generals, “useless duffers”. She, along with her sister started a law firm that opposed the imposition of Sharia laws in Pakistan by the dictator Zia who ruled Pakistan in the 1980s.
The eight-year imprisonment of the Christian lady Asia Bibi, in one of the most celebrated blasphemy cases in post-independent Pakistan, is narrated in great detail. I had searched for the details of this incident earlier, but this account by Walsh was exhaustive.
A succinct narrative of the political and cultural life in Karachi, the erstwhile capital and port city of Pakistan which houses almost three times the population of London City and is comparable in size to India’s Mumbai (erstwhile Bombay) is a pleasure to read. How the Mujahirs formed a union and how they loathed the influx of more migrants from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, were all new information.
The killing of Osama Bin laden by US Navy SEALS in a property adjoining a military base in Pakistan is one of the most shameful events in the history of Pakistan. Declan Walsh observes that USA and Pakistan had been “feuding and falling in love” for decades. He also observes that the association is sans any genuine affection – only based on shared materialistic interests than values. (exactly as between most medical professionals in my state).
Walsh also narrates the story of the police chief of Pakistan’s biggest city (“Karachi’s Dirty Harry”), whose mansion, “built with money beyond the means of a humdrum cop”, was destroyed by a suicide bomber; and the profligate governor of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous territory, gunned down by a soldier from his own security for daring to advocate for a Christian woman (Asia Bibi) accused of blasphemy. He compares this killing to that of the assassination of Indira Gandhi who was similarly gunned down by her Sikh security guards.
The text was so immersive that there were occasions where I pulled the car over and listened to certain portions peacefully again. The book concludes with a brief narration of how Jinnah’s Malabar Hill Mansion, for the ownership of which, his daughter Dina contested with the State, was burnt to ashes by the Balochistan dissidents. The book is nothing but the enthralling pounds of data Deccan Walsh amassed in his ten-year-long life in Pakistan, traveling the length and breadth of the country. His statement “Islam or the Army were the glue that was supposed to hold the country together, however, they were exactly the ones that tore the country apart” is nothing but a summarization of a treasure of learning he picked up by quizzing a lot of Pakistanis. Pakistan, as Declan Walsh states, is the only country on the planet that some of the citizens still regretted, coming into being.
My review 8/10
Dr. Anoop Prathapan
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