Bull's Eye

Let’s scan this family portrait, clockwise from above. Nepal is suspended mid-air between Reich and Revolution, and there’s always plenty action in the streets. To make sense of its exact relation with the world, Himal magazine once printed the map upside down: Nepal nestled at the bottom, the Gangetic plains ranged above it, the Deccan triangle pointed up, Kanyakumari an arrowhead. Bangladesh had an official ban on politics till this week— the benign junta lifted it on popular demand, having taken care to first deposit both the begums in the calaboose. Burma, seen through the mists, is an oriental eden full of pagodas, poppy and feral charm: among its teeming fauna, there is also that rara avis, caged in perpetuity, a la Zafar. (Come to think of it, it’s the closest the Mughals got to democracy: both met their end in a Rangoon prison.) Sri Lanka, of course, holds the world patent on a bottomless goblet filled with the blended wisdoms of Buddha and Sun Tzu, that is to say, the beach life and the battle trench. Maldives is blessed with a champion of free speech in Gayoom—chances are you’ve never heard of (or from) a rival champ. We missed Bhutan—but, alas, that gentle kingdom is contemplating democracy.

And yes, Pakistan, host of ceaseless experiments in political theory. Whatever you say about it, the opposite is also untrue. It’s again at what hacks love to euphemise as an "inflexion point" in its history. Nawaz Sharif is again the paragon of liberty—last time, his ideas on liberty were practised chiefly on public funds; his exit was a matter of moral relief. One feels sorry for Musharraf: here’s a general who’s seen only lost battles yet contrives to retain his bluster through humiliations that would have felled a lesser man. He allows lawyers to holler and revive the judiciary. He holds elections. He even has a party. I mean, how low can a dictator go and yet be called a dictator? (Sorry, Bob.) Anyways, we have here a live specimen to finally prove if history moves in a straight line, in circles or in Fibonacci spirals. That leaves India....