dissapointing pakistan-i

Watching cultural sojourns on discovery is usually an interesting hour spent fruitfully. Or so i believed till about half n hour back. Saira khan’s Pakistan journey was a episode I was really looking forward too. having heard second- hand accounts of how the country was in good and bad ways so much like ours....culturally rich and vibrant with an added subtitle in Urdu on most of the billboards and street markers. I was looking forwards to the all night food market, the spices, the beautiful clothes, the wonderfully embroidered shoes, the beautiful mosques, the confluence of the old and the new, the beautiful valleys, the Sufi gatherings and more that I do not know.
Saira khan is an embodiment of, “angrez chale gaye...inko chod gaye”. She is a thoroughbred brit who reminds me of the feudal accounts of Asia and Africa that were written by Christian missionaries. Only they were not the natives (not usually) and they were largely hence ignorant of the cultural assumptions and practices of the natives. They could be called presumptuous fools who happened to have modern technology but what does one call a native who looks down upon her own culture and people, who shape her very person? Her discovery was no discovery but a journey to affirm what she had already thought Pakistan was. Going to the truck wallah’s roadside tea stall for the sole reason of invoking the glares of the truck drivers to prove that they are feudal can safely be termed feudal. It almost seemed like the report of a journalist trying to convince the world of the poor and denigrate country which needs necessarily to be pitied and funded. Feudal is the Pakistani equivalent for the Indian snake charmers and till the west decides to see better they will remain that.
The condition in Pakistan is perhaps as bad as she records but to show only one side of the culture and that too with a decided and detached superiority is going a bit too far.
Apart from everything else, the show was not particularly engaging because of the disengaged hosta s well as the itinerary. Pakistan is a beautiful place, i personally wish she could have done a better job at capturing that beauty.