In 2008 David Rohde, a NYTimes reporter, was kidnapped by the Taliban and held captive for 7 months in Pakistan.

NYtimes reporter David Rohde said while he was in captivity, he asked a young boy what he wanted to become when he grew up.  The boy said his ambition was to be a suicide bomber.  If that wasn’t an option, he then wanted to become a Mujahadeen fighter, and if that didn’t work out, third, he would be a Muslim.

At an NYU-hosted talk last month, Rohde shared several anecdotes that highlighted the grip the Taliban has over much of Afghanistan and the northwest region of Pakistan.

Interesting points for journalists that I took from the talk:

• Do governments pay ransom for kidnapped journalists?  Some do and some don’t.  The U.S. is a no-ransom-nation. Rohde said he mishandled expectations in the immediate hours after his kidnapping by telling his captors that he was worth more alive than dead, raising their hopes for a payoff.  The policy is muddy, so he’s working right now to formulate a standard policy.

• According to Rohde, the standard practice in kidnappings should be a media blackout.  He justified this by saying that “reporters withhold information all the time.”

• He was just unlucky. “Ten to 20 journalists have interviewed the Taliban in the past and there have been no kidnappings.”

• The media has played a major role in Pakistan’s crack down on the Taliban.  One of Musharaff’s legacies was a relaxation on media censorship. Television stations began showing videos of Taliban brutality, like the beating of young girl in Swat Valley. This was a major factor in turning popular opinion against the Taliban.

Click on the photo to view my Pakistan Fashion week video

It’s been a month since I got back, and haven’t yet found the time to upload the final product. After much technical difficulty in the field, this is what I got.

Get out your cellphone cameras peeps! Mary Bowers on the red carpet at Pakistan Fashion Week! (Click for more photos)

It’s a media-on-media blitz. Something I’ve found very important to both Pakistan and India TV and newspapers is the desire to find out from Westerners what we think about their culture, their accomplishments, and in this case, their fashion shows. My reporting partner, Mary Bowers, was interviewed twice yesterday about Pakistan’s fashion week.  Eloquent and erudite, she commented on the region-oriented creativity she saw on the catwalk, and the reason why many of your “average citizens” from the West view Pakistan as a nation associated with terrorism.

I often wonder why they (Pak and India) even care.  Is it an inferiority complex?  Are we the “Mean Girls” at school who have to approve?  Most Americans are so absorbed in the pop lifestyle bound between the Today Show in New York and the Tonight Show in LA (or what’s left of it) that they haven’t witnessed the rich culture flourishing in the Eastern hemisphere underneath the stereotypes gleaned from breaking news headlines. And most have no idea what goes into creating a collection.

Do what you do and do it well, I say.  Some of the collections I saw tonight were, um, quite lacking in terms of tailoring, fit, and color palette.  Others, refined to the last detail. The bads: Frayed fabric, pantylines, and too-big dresses falling off models. Those lace bellbottom jeans?  They look like they should be costumes for the Greek chorus in a tragic Britany Spears opera. And that pea-green, pouffy, rhinestone-collared gown that looked like what an octopus would wear to an under-the-sea prom.  I’m not a buyer. The goods?  Can I take your embroiderer home with me? You will sell me on that white go-go dress with red tear-drop appliques, plunging neckline with impeccable tailoring, and a white neck-to-toe romper with exquisitely pleated texturing.

But again–that’s just me.  I don’t represent the full spectrum of Western taste, I’m a journalist from New York.  Sure I’m a mouthpiece to the world on what you’ve got, but I probably won’t be buying your clothes on my salary, nor will my audience until the world fuses a bit more. With fashion, I think you should just design as your heart leads you and get a good photographer, because just as in fancy, the decision to buy strikes us consumers in a second, love or hate at first sight.

Iqbal, the Christian and the Mosque

Earlier in the day Mary and I took a car tour of Lahore to shoot some B-roll, and well–sightsee and shop!  Highlights:

Our driver Iqbal, a Christian, showing us the ropes at a major mosque in town.

Having a dwarf with a navy blue cap embroidered in gold “SECURITY” help us park our car near Gowal Mandi–Food Street.

Watching a cross-legged guy sitting on an oven butcher up a chicken with a knife between his toes.

A rifle-carrying police escort riding shotgun *haha* with us to the fashion show.

Front row seats.

Lowlights:

Feeling absolutely exhausted from jet lag and adrenaline withdrawal.

Having a vendor pull out half his textile inventory trying to find us something we liked.  We bought nothing.

Going behind the scenes at our lunch-time restaurant to see where they prepare the food.

Confusion between us and our driver about pronouns. You means me AND you.  Wait. Who’s on first?

Blaring music from the catwalk ringing in my head.

Opening, Pakistan Sunsilk Fashion Week

View from the scrum, videographers pit at Pakistan Fashion Week.  From the end of the catwalk, I filmed about 7 collections–this was one of my favorites.  Colorful, weirdly striking, and played with my expectations by ending with a prayer.

The event was a media frenzy–even a media-on-media frenzy. Mary Bowers and I were asked to be guests on a call-in local TV talk show tomorrow.

Speeding along on the muddy canal.

Earlier in the day I met a bunch of college students practicing rowing on a canal in the middle of two highways.  I was just struck by this usually quiet, out of reach sport right in the middle of roaring traffic.

Typical fashion-campus style

I also took a day trip out with my *surprise* Christian driver whose office is in the bottom of a mosque to Punjab University campus to talk with young women about their sartorial choices.  Turns out, head gear is a personal decision, but modesty from neck, to wrist to ankle was the norm.

Night-time motorcycle riding

0500 or 0600: Woke up to hear call of prayer coming over loudspeaker nearby.

0800: Pulled blue-rose acrylic fleece comforter down to the floor.  Placed it over the marble tiles and laid down.  Did some yoga along with a Bollywood movie starring Shah Rukh Khan, mugging for the camera with his goofy- eyed gyrations.

0900: White-glove service breakfast.  Nibbled on some eggs and parantha–along with my first of many cups of chai for the day.

1100: Driver takes me to interview at the governor’s compound. To get inside, we had to go through a zig-zag maze of four metal barriers with barbed wire, bordered by white and red striped three-legged spikes, a guard who checked under the hood and in the trunk, then through another huge cast iron gate (also manned by armed guards)–the only entry beyond the 12-14 foot high walls. Inside–there are 100 acres covered in trees and gardens, a pond, cages full of exotic birds, a pool, and a herd of cows.

His media coordinator, a former professional cricketer, took me around the grounds. Inside the mesh cages I spied pairs of pink pelicans, green parrots, black swans, an iridescent peacock, brown chickens and more.  A bearded laborer dressed in white salwar kameez stood nearby, fishing at a man-made lake.

Back at the compound, I waited in an office with some military personnel who alternate smoked, watched local news and monkey documentaries on TV, and typed away on Apple laptops.  When they found out I had worked in Delhi, they were incredibly curious about how I thought it compared to Lahore, as none of them had ever been to India before.  This shocked me. The distance between Lahore and Amritsar, India (right on the border) is about 31 miles.  The distance to Delhi is about 250 miles. That’s like me living in Rochester, New York and never going to Canada.  Except it’s not.  It’s so much different.  Pak and India have fought four official wars, and tensions rose last year after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, which India asserts was allegedly planned and carried out by Pakistani terrorists. They say they plan to hold secretary level talks very soon.  I’m glad the US didn’t have beef with Canada as I was growing up.

To me, they seemed incredibly similar.  The same high walls surrounding all the government and “upper-class” compounds, similar families of four crowding onto motorbikes in tangled traffic, dopplegangers of dust-covered kids running through piles of garbage to play cricket, the same stench of sewage that wafts in and out. Even the language sounds indistinguishable to my ear–I used all the Hindi I learned (the very little I have retained) and passed it off as Urdu.  The main differences?  The air did seem to be cleaner than Delhi, (the governor calls his compound the “lungs” to the city). Most everyone here is Muslim instead of Hindu or Sikh. The traffic is slightly less manic. Loudspeakers from mosques do break concentration and take me out for a transcendental second.  Overall, my first day impression: Lahore seems a paler version of Delhi.  The same forms exist, but the overripe scents, sparkly kitsch, and general chaos of India seemed lesser here.

1300: Inteviewed the Governor. He dressed casually, in a black salwar kameez, and chic, wraparound glasses a la Bono. A successful businessman, he’s starting up accounting and investment firms, retail chains, and a telecommunications company, with interests in the Middle East and Hong Kong.  I didn’t throw him too many heavy hitting questions–as I’m here covering fashion week.  Basically he said the media has overblown the security issue in Pakistan, and he’s been surprised by the rising percentage he’s seen young Pakistani women completing higher degrees. After the interview he took me on a tour through the compound–a reception room with portraits of Benazir Bhutto, Jinnah and Zardari, a dining room with vaulted mosaic ceiling built over an ancient tomb, and the billard room where Jinnah played pool. Cool.

17:30: Decided to get out and see the town. On foot.

17:50: Quickly became lost at dead-end near railroad tracks.

17:52: Bearded motorcycle riding guy with a baby face, wearing brown wool salwar kameez and long blazer asked me, “Madam, where are you going?”  and offered to give me a ride. I accept.  He told me he is a “good Muslim man.” He proved trustworthy and I hired him to take me around for the rest of the day.

18:50: After picking up a few items, I really wanted to go to a market to buy some prayer caps.  He says ok, but kept making all these detours . . . to show off his new job to his family. We first stopped at his aunt’s house for chai–I met his extended family, including his grandmother who lives on a rope-woven bed in the main room.  Poor lady, she had to relieve herself in a bucket while I was there. Then we stopped off at his father’s office. Photograph.

20:20: We headed for market.  Ran out of gas.  Had to walk a half mile to the petrol station.

20:50: Back on the bike we made it to the market and I got a great deal on some beautiful prayer caps.

22:00: Made it back to the hotel.  Really tired, but no better way to travel than motorbike.

Meta Story:  Reporting like Indiana Jones.  Divya and I took trains, jeeps, motorcycles, autos and waded through thigh-high water to get to the people hit by the floods in Bihar.  Most live in camps now, but some have stayed near their homes, most destroyed by water, to stay near their cattle.

Devastating.  Government aid was scant and late, but local networks helped keep people afloat:

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxv3pPIwWug

Madame Devaux and Lake Pagong

Georgia O’Keefe–on my mind at Pagong Lake.  Embodied in the form of Madame Devaux.

She wasn’t a painter, but she’s lived an exotic life.  She once lived in a Yugoslavian prison for 10 months.  She’ll be sure to tell you that meat causes cancer, and demand NO SALT in everything she eats. At 78, she’s still trekking through the rooftop of the world: the Himalayas.

She’s Madame Devaux . . . my travel companion for the weekend. Here she is on a sand bar of Lake Pagong. Four years ago she scattered her husband’s ashes here, where azures, teals, and sapphires of the lake’s melt water meet the iron streaked, mocha hued mountains.

For more pictures of paradise, click here.

Dog Statue at Hemis Monastery

I felt a bit like this after my icy cold shower this mornin’.

But the day turned out to be sunny, with many peaceful views to gaze upon.

My driver, Khan, took me in a Toyota Qualis to see some local monasteries at Thikshey and Hemis. All along the route the highway authority has placed signs to hinder speeding. Some of my favorites:

“It’s better to be Mr. Late, than Late Mr.”

“Speed is the knife that cutes [sic] lives.”

“We love you honey, but not your speed.

At Hemis, the leaves have already started to fall. The drive up was dotted with stuppas, mud brick walls, and huge expanses of rocky wasteland leading up to the mountain peaks sprinkled with snow.

Back on the main road between an army outpost and farmers pulling in their hay crops, I spied a model posing in a wine-colored salwar kamez with the hard brown mountains in the distance. The photographer snapped away as she struck her poses.  Must have been freezing!

Tomorrow I’m doing an overnight trek with a 78-year-old French woman. Should be interesting . . . mon dieu.

META STORY–Wild Goose Chase turns into Caged Pigeon Chase: Drupad Parsai and I hunted far and wide for people who would show us the acid baths and open flame aspect of recycling. We visited Shastri Park, Turkman’s Gate, Mayapuri, etc. But it takes place inside at night, because people are afraid to be caught doing it now, as its legality is suspect.

But some contacts we made said of course we will take you to see this done. We were introduced to the brother-in-law of the city councillor of Old Delhi, who is all connected up in the informal sector, along with his associate Ichi, the mosquito hunter. They took us all through Old Delhi, but nobody would ante up with the acid. So they ditched that plan and decided to be hospitable. They took us to the top of the highest house in Old Delhi to see the pigeon coops.

Apparently during the British Raj, the Brits would keep pigeons for sport, training them to fly in formation over their estates. It became a sport that’s still practiced–mostly in southern India. But we got to see Ichi’s neighbor’s pigeons, fat and happy, with bracelets around their legs.

The pigeons didn’t look like they fly around all that much, but I would have liked to.  The view was amazing.  The Red Fort and Jama Masjid straight down–the rest of Delhi merging into the haze to the south.

For more pics, click here.

It’s gorgeous, amazing, appears to float on air. But it was a rough day.

I rode for FIVE hours in the backseat of a bumpy Toyota Qualis. My body is just about 5 inches too long, so I was bent in half with the seat digging midway into my back. I think my organs were totally rearranged. So I felt totally car sick the whole way there.

Then I reached my limit with the whole objectification of my Western-ness for cameos as a token girlfriend photo for teenage boys’ cellphones. Karyn and I finally decided no more, except with little kids.

Things changed as I walked behind the floating Taj to the flowing Mother Yamuna. A little life force cleansing my mind, although still pretty filthy in real life. I mean the river.

The highlight came at the local Pizza Hut chain where the manager and his server staff cleared the tables and put on an impromptu Bollywood dance for us. Elvis reincarnated I tell you. Swivel hips, pelvic thrusts, tight pants and all! Wow.

And the Diet Coke and pizza was good too. Just like I remember from middle school.