SOON after he moved back to Pakistan in 1991 after thirty years in the United States, I asked the late Eqbal Ahmad what he missed most about his life in America.

"Good conversation", he replied. "In Pakistan, the talk invariably turns to politics and to the latest scam whoever you are with. Personalities, and not ideas, are discussed ad nauseam. In other countries, educated people talk about a range of subjects, but the focus in Pakistan is exclusively on politicians and their antics. After a point this gets very boring".

For a year or so before he died barely two months ago, Eqbal made several trips to India on professional engagements, and shortly before his death, I repeated my question with reference to India. "Politics is very seldom discussed," he replied. "People talk about a book they have read, or a film or play they have seen. Somebody might discuss the merits of a talented young musician, but politics and politicians do not often figure in a conversation".

I have noticed the same thing on my travels. While politics is the mainstay of the media, few nations are absorbed in it to the extent Pakistanis are, whether they are at home or abroad. In fact, expatriate Pakistanis are far more passionate and opinionated in their involvement in domestic politics. The exchanges that take place in cyberspace between various Pakistanis match the anger and intolerance that pass for political debate in Pakistan.

Although I read all the e-mails sent to me by readers, I must confess that I generally delete messages addressed simultaneously to scores of people without reading them. But once in a while, when I do open them, I am amazed and horrified by the hostility some of them express: there is currently a vicious argument going on over alleged Punjabi dominance and Mohajir oppression. You'd have thought we have enough of this stuff in Pakistan and would be spared this bigotry on the internet, but those participating in this free-for-all seem to have nothing better to do. My only advice to them is to get a life.

When I request some of these cyberspace warriors to spare me their rage and delete me from their e-mail news groups, they get angry, accusing me of not wishing to hear other points of view while inflicting mine on others through my columns. Fair enough, but while some of them seem to have nothing better to do but to fire off badly written and offensively worded missives, I have a nine to five job in addition to this and other columns. And as I am invariably falling behind on my reading, I spend as little time as I can on the internet.

All of this only underlines the point I made earlier: as a nation, we are addicted to politics and really have very little else to say to each other. How to explain this obsession? No sooner than a government is formed we start speculating on its fall. Each time a scandal is uncovered - and they are uncovered with depressing frequency - a crisis is forecast for the government of the day. Newspapers lead this feeding frenzy with highly speculative and generally libellous stories and comments.

Even when there is no scandal, we are quite capable of inventing one. For instance, when we lost to Bangladesh in the World Cup qualifying match, many Pakistanis were convinced that Nawaz Sharif had placed a large bet on the weakest team in the tournament at 30 to 1. Right or wrong, we are ready to believe the worst of our leaders; unfortunately, time and again they give us every excuse to do so.

Then, of course, there is our deeply divided polity that has polarized society to an irredeemable extent: either you are with one party or another or against it - there is no middle ground. In most countries, politics is not an activity civilized people engage in, and politicians are tolerated as a necessary nuisance. In Pakistan, we have not yet defined our identity or our place in the world, or indeed, what period of history we occupy. For many Pakistanis, especially those with a fanatical world view, we are still stuck somewhere in the mediaeval era.

This dichotomy creates a perpetual tension between those with a liberal interpretation of religion and the zealots. There is also constant competition between ethnic groupings as the smaller provinces are convinced they are getting a raw deal. All these rivalries place a heavy burden on the political process. In other countries, many of these fundamental issues have been sorted out years ago, and where they have not - as in the Balkans, for example - we can see the results of this tension.

Take the current flare-up in Kashmir as another example of our sick preoccupation with politics. No sooner had Nawaz Sharif met Clinton in Washington and announced that freedom fighters would withdraw from their positions in Kargil than rumours began circulating that the Pakistani PM would soon be ousted. Indeed, this speculation was soon doing the rounds in expatriate circles in London and points west. Nobody was prepared to see the significance of the fact that the American president spent over three hours with the leader of a fairly insignificant country on the American Independence Day, and had breakfast with him the next morning. It would seem that a bigger deal is on the cards - one that would strengthen and not weaken Nawaz Sharif.

Frankly, if he has indeed managed to come to an understanding that will end the Kashmir conflict, I, for one, will support him. But our conspiracy theorists are spinning scenarios that have the Pakistani PM being ousted by the religious right supported by an element of the army unhappy at seeing a negotiated end to its Kargil misadventure. In the unending political bickering that passes for rational debate in Pakistan, people read the most convoluted meanings into the most straightforward events.

I think another reason that politics so dominates conversation in Pakistan is that people genuinely have very little else to talk about. Very few people read, so very few books are written. Our cinema is dead, and theatre barely exists on the fringes. Wherever we look, we see a cultural wasteland. So what should people talk about except politics?