Mourning Nehru in Pakistan

Mourning Nehru in Pakistan via Sundeep Dougal's blog:
"Asrar Ahmed, a Pakistani colleague, asked me whether something worthwhile would come out of the Nehru-Ayub talks. With my unfailing knack for stressing the obvious, I replied that it all depended on how much time Nehru had. Whereupon Asrar and others exclaimed in unison, “May Allah prolong his life”. As if on cue, Hafeez Jullundari — the nearest thing Pakistan had to the poet laureate as well as a sort of minister-in-waiting during the Sheikh’s stay — stalked up to our table and sat down. Wagging his finger, he told me: “Inder Malhotra, you people have had a long ride feeling superior to us because you were lucky to have Nehru. Our misfortune was that after the early deaths of Jinnah and Liaquat, all our leaders were useless. Now Nehru is about to go. You will be down to our level, and then we will see”. All the Pakistanis around the table were horrified. They started remonstrating with the renowned poet but their attempt was drowned in the sudden flurry and noise. Sheikh Sahib had come down and everyone was being directed to his or her vehicle.


I do not know whether Murree’s Lintot restaurant still exists. On that day, however, it served us excellent breakfast in its balcony. It was there that the news of Nehru’s illness caught up with us. He died at the precise moment when the Sheikh set foot in Muzaffarabad. The thought uppermost in my mind was that the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir was not the best place to to be in at the time of Nehru’s passing. But what followed stunned me.


The huge crowd that had assembled to welcome Sheikh Abdullah instantly turned into a mourning mass. Every man, woman and child, hands raised skywards, was praying for Nehru. Some of them were crying. No one touched the elaborate wazwan laid out. Suddenly, there was commotion at a short distance. A tall man was shouting my name, beating his head with both his hands and cursing his “black tongue”. It was Hafeez Jullundari. As he apologised to me profusely, Sheikh Sahib arrived to calm him. Instead, the two embraced each other and sobbed.
...

After the dinner trays were cleared, most of us got busy writing our dispatches. The airhostess came, sat down in the empty seat next to me, and asked if she could read what I was typing. When, while reading my homage to the iconic leader for The Statesman, my paper then, she reached my brief reference to the Pakistani reaction to his death, she broke down. Rushing to the washroom, she came back composed, and said: “Sir, I am sure we cannot be enemies for ever”. I told her that these were exactly the words Nehru had used seven years earlier."