by Diplomatic warming produces ten days of polite behaviour on both sides; historians update contingency files
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Warmth Is Unexplained and Monitored
NEW DELHI — India-Pakistan diplomatic relations experienced an unexplained period of warmth this week, characterised by the absence of any new border incident, a joint statement on flood relief coordination from a senior official of each country who described the other’s country as a neighbour (accurate) and a partner in regional challenges (unexpected), and a meeting between trade ministry officials that did not result in a communique but that both sides described as constructive, which in India-Pakistan diplomatic language is either the most promising two-word assessment possible or the complete and total absence of progress dressed in polite clothes, and that nobody on either side can distinguish from the outside.
Historians who study the subcontinent placed the warming in the context of several similar periods over the past three decades, noting that India-Pakistan relations have a cyclical quality in which extended periods of tension are interrupted by brief periods of engagement that produce hope, then a miscalculation or domestic political pressure or a cross-border incident, and then a return to the baseline, which is tense but stable, and that the current warming is either the beginning of a genuine new phase or the latest cycle, and that the distinguishing characteristic between those two options will only be visible in retrospect, which is when all distinguishing characteristics in India-Pakistan relations become visible, except the ones that become visible suddenly, which are the ones that require the contingency files.
The Cricket Fixture Observes the Warmth
The scheduled ICC cricket fixture between the two countries, announced earlier in the month, has benefited atmospherically from the diplomatic warmth, with officials from both cricket boards stating publicly that the match will be played in a spirit of sporting competition, which is what they always say, and that travel for fans will be facilitated, which is what they say during warming periods and which produces a small but visible number of Pakistani fans in Indian cities and Indian fans watching from their screens in Pakistan, both groups existing in the gap between the political relationship and the human one, which is a gap that cricket temporarily fills and that returns to its natural width when the match is over.
The SAARC Secretariat, which exists to facilitate regional cooperation in South Asia and which has been largely inactive since the India-Pakistan relationship made regional summits impossible to convene, released a statement noting the diplomatic improvement and expressing hope for a resumption of regional dialogue, which it has been expressing for eleven years. The ICC confirmed the match scheduling. The historians updated their files. The plumber in Jayanagar watched the news. His cousin told him things seemed better. The warmth continued through the week. The weekend arrived. Both countries’ armies remained at their positions on the Line of Control, which they always do, warm or otherwise, because the positions are the positions, and the warmth is the atmosphere, and the atmosphere changes faster than the positions, and the positions are where the real answer lives, and both sides know this, and the game will be played anyway, and watched by 800 million people, and it will matter completely while it is happening, and the positions will be the same when it is done, and that is the story of South Asia, written in every cricket scorecard since 1952, which is also a kind of record, and which holds.
The warming’s most significant test will come at the cricket fixture, where the crowd behaviour, the media coverage, and the reactions on both sides of the border will reveal more about the state of the relationship than the official statements have. Cricket crowds are honest in the way that official statements are not, because the crowd is experiencing the game rather than managing it, and the experience contains all the history that the official statements are carefully not mentioning, and the crowd expresses it, sometimes through the noise and sometimes through the silence and sometimes through the specific sound that 80,000 people make when a Pakistani player takes a wicket in a crucial moment, or when an Indian batsman hits a six, or when the two captains shake hands at the end and the score is in favour of one country and the players from both are exhausted and have played as well as they can and the match is over and the relationship is what it was before the match started, which is complicated and present and real and the only relationship these two countries have, and the cricket is the only place it is fully visible, and 800 million people will watch it, and some of them will cry, and all of them will remember, and the warming will either continue or it won’t, and the cricket will have told us which, and the historians will have been watching, with their files, and the files will be updated, and the drawer will close, and the next match will be scheduled, and that is South Asia, and that is cricket, and that is enough.
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SOURCE: Satirical Journalism
