January 11, 2004

The sherwani seems to have caught the imagination of those in the upper-most echelons of power. It made headlines when President Musharraf wore one to India on his last peace mission over two years ago. And now, Prime Minister Vajpayee has requested a sherwani from Pakistan. And a sherwani he is going to get — not one but two.

It doesn’t take too many guesses to figure out who the designer is. Amir Adnan, of course. Finance Minister and Vajpayee’s Minister-in-Waiting, Shaukat Aziz asked the Indian PM what he wanted from Pakistan as a token to remember the trip by. The prime minister promptly said he wanted a sherwani.

As Amir Adnan had designed Musharraf’s sherwani, he was contacted and flew with his wife Huma to Islamabad as guests of the government. The couple are understandably excited for having been selected to design the garment. The next day, staying in the same hotel as the Indian PM, the couple met Vajpayee and took his measurements for the sherwani and presented different outfits to him and his sister’s son-in-law Ranjhan, who was accompanying him.

The prime minister told Adnan that he wore a sherwani in the ‘70s to Pakistan, which was sewn by the same tailoring house that had sewn the sherwanis for Quaid-i-Azam and Pandit Nehru. He also presented them with a book of his poetry and a CD of his poem sung by Jagjit Singh. Said Amir Adnan, “He is a gentle, soft-spoken person and it was a pleasure to have met him. We will go to India in the third week of this month as Ranjhan has invited us to come over and present the sherwanis to the prime minister.

The sherwani, it seems, is playing an important role in cross-border diplomacy.

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