| She stands commanding the forecourt of the British High Commission enclave in Islamabad, here flowing robes arrested permanently in stone. High upon her erect head she wears the imperial crown, and appropriately she faces here own people, turning her back against the population that pickpocketed her beloved Indian Empire away from here great-grandson King George VI. The statue is armless. The outstretched arms that once held in the right hand a royal sceptre and in the left an orb representing the world have been broken off. Neglected for the past forty-five years, she has now been rescued by the British High Commissioner Sir Nicholas Barrington from the clutches of some descendant of the Public Works Department and repatriated to that corner plot in the Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave, ‘ a corner of a foreign field that is forever England.' |
| Seeing the statue one is reminded of the uncanny likeness it bears to someone else - to a similar queenly figure with the same erect stance unbowed by the forces of adversity and disdainful of the damage and public servant could wreak upon here. The armless statue of the late Queen Victoria portrayed in her forties reminds one immediately of our own royalty – the former Prime Minister Mr. Benazir Bhutto who began here fortieth year on 21 June.[EXTRACT] |
| Published in THE NATION, 25 June 1993, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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