o! Just Me

I was asking my friend, “Have you read In the Line of Fire“. What he answered was funny that we all laughed aloud, “I will, we should Know what the Enemy thinks“. No, we don’t think of Pakistan as our enemy, atleast not me. I personally have no particular enemity with anybody or any country and won’t do that as far as I can. I was once even approached to go to Pakistan to train a team of Flash Developers. It somehow did not materialize as the relation between India and Pakistan suddenly deteriorated at that time. Being in India, I was expecting that the book would either be banned or there would be some hoopla somewhere somehow. But non so far of such incidents, instead the Book was sold out in the first week of its launch in India. Newspapers, Magazines and Tabloid carried articles of the book, most of them in a deregatory criticism. I am not in any position to give my judgement but yes, the book was a little jerky to read, unlike other free flowing english books that I have read so far.

I read the book after reading reviews, criticisms etc. However, I tried my best not to be biased. In the Line of Fire: A Memoir is an autobiography of General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military president. Once in the book, after coupla chapters, you’ll feel like Pervez is trying to clarify and give justifications of incidents that happend in a nicely compiled book. There were lots of justification as to why and how things happened, and they are they all good from his perspective.

Of course, he have explained all the bad things about India. How there were many false fighting by Indians? How badly was Indian defeated twice and another badly in the Kargil was. Well, as far as all the history facts that I have read, this does not look right. I’d not really called it defeat, but in all the Wars (if it is to be called), Pakistan was badly bruised. To the best of my knowledge, the wars was felt all over Pakistan but to the Indian side, it was only concentrated at the place bordering Pakistan. It may be just my view but even during the Kargil war, India was extremely at ease and do not seem to be bothered at all. Alright, Pervez’s bad impression of India through his book is understood but there are critics abounds from inside Pakistan itself about his book which claims that it is more like a self-satisfactory rewrite of his deeds. Many section of Pakistan is not happy how he treated many important people of Pakistan in his book.

I would not like to go further but would just like to say that this is not a bad book at all. Nice to know things beyond the frontier, educative enough to know many things without which we might have been with the one-sided information about many wars, happenings between India and Pakistan. Well, I would consider it a worthy collection for your Library.